Book Review: Americans and the California Dream by Kevin Starr

I read Kevin Starr’s Americans and the California Dream very slowly, in small passages and with no sense of pressure over a period of 8 months. 

It’s not a chronology of large happenings, but rather a record and Starr’s literary cultural analysis of what others thought and wrote in and about the California of 1850-1915. Starr had, as his vantage point, substantial historical knowledge and a native son’s heart for ferreting out the antecedents of subsequent events and dynamic on-going consequences intended and otherwise. 

In Starr’s words from the last page, he selected "acts of definition, moments when vision and event betrayed their interchange, and the aesthetic pattern and moral meaning of social experience became clear. History grants few such occasions.” (P. 444) 

I construct a timeline for myself as I read any history. As much information as I am able to retain, dates often escape me. Starr presents his narrative as an ”act of memory” rather than a classic or linear analysis. It might help some readers to read the final page reflections in conjunction with the introduction to avoid what some reviews express as frustration with and disappointment in this approach to history. 

Any study of people, time and place is best done through the politics, history and literature of the period. Starr’s book is best read as an adjunct to both linear historical documentations and first hand accounts, journals and essays of the time.  I have read many of the accounts to which Starr refers with some notable exceptions. I have never been able to read Gertrude Atherton and Starr’s assessment of her outlook helped me understand more clearly why I have resisted both her “history” and her novels. “For the sake of the establishment myth, and for the sake of her own role as a writer in that establishment, Gertrude Atherton did her best to sustain an illusion…” 

And then there is a book to which Starr has alerted me that I plan to seek out. California Coastal Trails, a Horseback Ride from Mexico to Oregon, by J. Smeaton Chase, was published in 1913. Mr. Starr says that past, present and future converge in this elegant narrative and he likens it to an elegy and yet Chase shares his hope. In Starr’s words, “In 1913 California-as-nature yet seemed capable of coping with California-as-history.”( P. 438)

Kevin Starr researched and wrote with hope himself and his work is testament to his belief that commitment to California does not preclude scrutiny, nor does admiration always blind one to her faults. Americans and the California Dream is work to read, but it is a worthwhile work.

The Governor and the Chicken Lady

A True Story Retold...

Christian Archibald Herter, who lived from 1898 to 1967, was Governor of the state of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1957.  This is a story he told on himself.

 I heard a version of it in a sermon in the 1980’s from a dear Anglican priest, Fr. David Schofield, who used it to illustrate how important it is for us to know who we are.   Although I remembered the story vividly, I wanted to be sure I had the Governor's name right.  When I checked it out on the internet I found the tale has been repeatedly used  to make many points, but I think it hardly needs any amplification to be of great value.  Here it is as I remember it.

~~~~~

Christian Herter, a graduate of Harvard and the governor of Massachusetts mid 1950’s was seeking re-election.  He was having one of those really hard days on the campaign trail.  He had spoken at a morning breakfast meeting where he had no more than a cup of coffee while his listeners ate.   He had then skipped lunch altogether to meet other duties,  consoling himself that his last scheduled event on the trail was at a church barbecue.  He arrived a bit late and was relieved to see food was still being served.  The Governor  was really hungry. The queue was quite long but he resisted the temptation to be recognized for special treatment and stood at the end of the line.  The day was coming to a close, he was tired, he was hungry and everything smelled so good.  As he moved down the serving line he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken.  She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

“Excuse me,” Governor Herter said. “Do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?”

“Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.”

“But I’m so hungry, I haven’t had a bite all day.” 

“I’m sorry,” the woman said again. “Only one piece to a customer.”

Governor Herter thought of himself as a modest and unassuming man but he suddenly decided to throw his weight around just a little bit. He pulled himself up to his full height and asked the woman behind the platter of barbecued chicken, “Excuse me, but do you know who I am?” 

“Why, yes, Governor, sir, I do.  Do you know who I am?”  she replied. 

Governor Herter had to confess that he didn’t have any idea who the lady was.

“Well, I’m the chicken lady, and it's one piece per person. Now please, sir, kindly move along.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my edge toward dawn...English Creek - A Book's Reflection

Does your neighborhood have any little houses, oh, bigger than a bird house, but smaller than a dog house, that hold free books to borrow and pass around? There are several, depending on my "umph" and the rise of the mercury in the thermometer, that are within walking distance from my house.



Upside down and flat back against the wall, behind the books presenting their spines of titles, a bit of the painting on the cover of this aging Penguin paperback caught my eye. I rearranged the books and pulled out English Creek  by Ivan Doig.  Wallace Stegner's front cover recommendation is fairly emphatic. He uses the word real  three times:  real Montana, real West and Doig is a real writer.
Stegner I know, so  I figured Doig was worth a try; and he is.
Doig's story is set in the summer of 1939 in a fictive Montana region but he describes the terrain with such visual clarity that I could navigate myself up and down the buttes and valleys without a map.

I was still deciding if I would plunge in and commit to read when I met, on page three, a word new to me,"brockled."

"Jick, Set your mouth for it."                                                                                                             Supper and my mother. It is indelible in me that all this began there right at the very outset of June, because I was working over my saddle and lengthening the stirrups again, to account for how much I was growing that year, for the ride up with my father on the counting trip the next morning. I can even safely say what the weather was, one of those brockled late afternoons under the Rockies when the tag ends of storm cling in the mountains and sun is reaching through wherever it can between the cloud piles. Tell me why it is that details like that, saddle stirrups a notch longer or sunshine dabbed around on the foothills some certain way, seem to be the allowance of memory while the bigger points of life hang back.

 Doig had me. Now I was ready for Jick to share the summer when he was not yet fifteen. I was ready to follow him from the light of the brockled afternoon into the family supper.  The rift that manifests at the family table that night is continually set in more far reaching contexts as Doig spins a story both specific and universal through a young observer who is curious enough about human nature, heritage, history and the connections and dislocations in his wider community to open a very broad tale indeed.

You know that feeling when you are nearing the end of a story that you've entered into and you aren't ready for it to end; you know when you read that last page you are going to feel a little bereft?  Well,  that is where I was at when I mentioned to another neighbor, unconnected with the neighborhood book swap houses, how much I was enjoying what I thought was just an obscure little Montana story.   " I love Ivan Doig," she said as she ran off to her den to retrieve three other of his books to lend to me.   I haven't begun any of them yet, but it is a fine feeling knowing more of this author is now readily available to explore.

I'll leave you with the beginning of another passage that resonated with a desire in me.

Where morning is concerned, I am my father all over again. "The day goes downhill after daybreak" was his creed.  I don't suppose there are too many people now who have seen a majority of the dawns of their life, but my father did, and I have. And of my lifetime of early rising I have never known better dawns than those when I rode from English Creek to my haying job on Noon Creek...(page 233)

That is the lead-in to some inspired descriptions wrapped in and around Jick's  deep as usual, thoughts and feelings and then Jick asks. "Is it any wonder each of these haying-time dawns  made me feel remade?"

All right, I 'll admit, while I  have sometimes been getting up in time to watch the sun climb over  Mount St. Helena and her foothills, I as often find my way back to bed to sleep a bit more. Sleep is good for remaking and healing too, but new energy and the dawn are calling.

with best wishes,

Jeannette

Two Years Before the Mast by R.H. Dana Jr. Classic California Lit & History

(Monday, March 16th)

To read a classic such as

 Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana Jr. and not share a little about it seems selfish.  If one finds a treasure, why not share it?

I have been trying to be a bit more generous about reflecting on books I have truly enjoyed.



It's tempting to dive right into another book,  but I know my good intentions to write up at least an encouraging note for others to consider the merit of this book would then more easily be derailed.  I know that it's more likely to happen the sooner I try to distill my thoughts and before I'm too far immersed in another tome.

I have only moments this morning,  but I will leave this opener here for myself  as a magnet to draw me back to write a bit more on Dana's tale of shipping out of Boston  'round the Horn to California in the year 1835.


(Wednesday, March 18th)

A student at Harvard, Dana's eyesight suffered from a case of Measles,  so he took leave of intense studies and rather than voyage as a passenger, he signed on a merchant ship as a common seaman.

The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trousers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well as a jack tar.  But it is impossible to deceive the practiced eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by everyone on board, as soon as I hove in sight. ( page 2- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

He  kept a daily brief diary of his experience and when able also wrote out his experiences at more length in a different journal.  His sea chest, where he kept his more extensive writings,  was lost upon his return to Boston. Happily for posterity, while back at law school, he rewrote his narrative from the framework of the daily log which he had  kept with him.

His determination inspires me.


 (Sunday, March 22nd)
Before I go on,  I admit that not only did I not discipline my free time to write on Dana this last week, I read a Pushkin story,  "The Captain's Daughter."  Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799 to an old noble family.  Pushkin was sixteen years old when Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a family who had distinguished themselves in young America, so my excursion into Alexander Pushkin's tale of a young man coming of age in a remote military outpost was not totally removed in time from Dana's true tale.  Each story is told in a young man's narrative voice as struggles with self, nature, and the shifting hierarchies of mankind are faced and both  men esteemed honor and purpose.

This was my first reading of  Two Years before the Mast from cover to cover.  I was familiar with excerpts of it from my studies at University of California at Berkeley when obtaining  an undergraduate degree in American Studies.  I was reminded of it again several years ago as my eye doctor, as has been true of many an oculist over the years, used  passages from Dana's journal to test acuity of vision. In other readings of histories of the peopling of the West, quotes and commendations of Dana's work finally spurred me to read him in full.

Thus far, I realize I have primarily documented that I am often slow to pursue challenges, but this is, after all, my web log so I might as well tell the truth.

( Tuesday March 24th)
Dana was acutely touched by the day to day dangers and difficulties faced by seamen and profoundly touched by an unjust flogging he witnessed.   He vowed that if he were ever in a position to be a help to them, he would be.  His desire for equity and justice inspired his writing.  He noted that while there were already masterful of tales of sea voyages, "a voice from the forecastle has not yet been heard."

Dana has such fine powers of description in his clean prose that I was glad to travel over the seas with him, but I was even more pleased when the brig Pilgrim docked in ports I know and love.  Have you ever been to San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Monterey, or Yerba Buena,  San Francisco?
Dana spends long periods of time on shore. It isn't an all "...aloft to furl the sail..." story.  One of the striking aspects of Dana's recollections of California in 1835-36 is how brief the lifestyle he encountered on the coast of California was to be.  He saw California and met many of her inhabitants and visitors before the 1849 Gold Rush and huge influx of overland migrants.

There are three basic editions of  Two Years Before the Mast.

1.The original 1840 edition.
2. The 1869 edition - this is a revision by Dana when the copyright reverts back to him. He removed  the "sharply unromantic opening paragraphs" and the final chapter and he added a new chapter "Twenty Fours Years After."
3. The 1911 edition - prepared by his son Richard Henry Dana based upon the 1869 edition. His son adds research about the Crew, and a Dictionary of Nautical Terms based on Dana's "The Seaman's Friend" as well as an Introduction and a new chapter "Seventy Five Years After."

 The book is available online from Project Gutenberg.

(Wednesday, March 25th)

The edition I read included  "Twenty-four Years After" where Dana revisits California.
How often do we see our own place and time in the world and not realize how fast it is changing?
When I look back through my own private journals I see notes I have made of national and international events which I have almost forgotten about in the rush of new developments, yet the impact of those events and changes is deeply shaping today and the future.

One of the sentiments Dana expressed that I found very powerful is that while social troubles need attention, the changes needed are not always the ones brought about by  the exertion of more control or the enactment of more laws.

I know that there are many men who, when a few cases of great hardship occur, and it is evident that there is an evil somewhere, think that some arrangement must be made, some law passed, or some society got up, to set all right at once.  On this subject there can be no call for any such movement; on the contrary, I fully believe that any public and strong action would do harm, and that we must be satisfied to labor in the less easy and less exciting task of gradual improvement, and abide the issues of things working slowly together for good. ( page 361- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

There was one regret I experienced in reading this book, for there was a passage where I wished Dana had not been so focused. In his final chapter he begins to describe his  excursions to various parts of the state, traveling in coaches, in boats, and  on horseback as he radiates out from San Francisco into the interior, to Santa Clara and San  Jose,  up the San Joaquin river,  crossing the Tuolumne, Stanislaus and the Merced, to Mariposa, the big trees, and as he called it, Yo Semite Valley. He is briefly in full descriptive force and then he writes:

 These visits were so full of interest, with grandeurs and humors of all sorts, that I am strongly tempted to describe them.  But I remember that I am not to write a journal of a visit over the new California, but to sketch briefly the contrasts with  the old spots of 1835-6, and I forbear. ( page 392- The Harvard Classic Registered Edition) 

I hope I have conveyed enough enthusiasm about this classic to tempt you to add it to your reading list.
with best wishes,
Jeannette

Three Memoirs of Improbable Life Paths

None of the three autobiographical books I've read of late are hot off the press, but they were all new to me. And oddly, these three very different lives have a lot in common.

Late summer a friend gave me a copy of the 2011 New York Times Bestseller, Kisses from Katie.  I confess that I took it home and set it on a shelf.  It didn't look like "my kind of book."  I found the title to be cloying.  However, I trust my friend and wanted to be able to respond when asked if I had read the book, so I carried it on a road trip to Idaho and brought it home again, no more familiar with the story of the young woman on the cover than I was before my journey.

Once I finally began reading, I found a rather amazing tale of a girl who, based on a three week mission trip to Uganda during her senior year in high school, asked her parents for permission to postpone college for a year so she could return to Uganda and teach little children there.  Katie Davis was born in 1989 making her now twenty-five years old  in 2014.   That is especially important for her because Ugandan laws require residents to be twenty-five years old to adopt children and she has been the foster parent to thirteen little girls!  ***Yes, I know that exclamation points are best used sparingly.  I think I have have restrained myself greatly using only one; considering the  information contained in my last sentence, perhaps there should have been  thirteen of them.***

Next the 1990 Ben Carson story  Gifted Hands  fell into mine.  While Katie Davis is a daughter of privilege, her school's homecoming queen and class valedictorian,
Dr. Carson, born in 1951, was one of two sons of a working mother in inner-city Detroit.  The book opens with a letter to the reader from Sonya Carson who writes:

Dear Reader, As the mother of Ben and his brother, Curtis, I had a lot of challenges.  Being one of twenty-four children, married at age thirteen, and later having to get a divorce after finding out my husband was a bigamist were just a few of them....

Ben Carson begins his story sharing his childhood  struggles with a convincing vulnerability.  I had read on the back jacket that he became  director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Medical Institutions at age thirty-three, but I found little hint of that possibility as I read the chapters about his young life. I also had no idea how much brain surgery explanation I was getting myself into, but once I began this book there was no way I going to skip over any of it. In addition to his passion as a surgeon, Dr. Carson offers himself as a motivational speaker for young people.  He believes that "With the right help and the right incentive, many disadvantaged kids could achieve outstanding results."   He certainly has.

Son of Hamas...This incredible chronicle was published in 2010.  Mosab Hassan Yousef was born in the West Bank city of Ramallah "to one of the most religious Islamic families of the Middle East."  It was the same year I was giving birth to my first child in California so I have a very real sense of how long he has been on the planet; he is now thirty-seven years old, but he has lived in an utterly different world than the one I know. He is currently living under political asylum somewhere in America.   He didn't set out to write a New York Times bestseller, but he has.  He didn't set out to do many of the things he has done.

I am recommending these books to you.  I am  reticent to tell you much about their journeys as they are so personal and I want to neither add nor take away from the narrative of these brave souls.  Each one of them hopes to make the world a safer and better realm for others and to tell their respective stories they have to trust the reader to look beyond cultural or emotive differences.  These three lives with not a word written of them already represent tremendous  giving and impact in the world. Sharing one's story is an additional gift, a tremendous vulnerability and I am glad to have been a recipient.


I 'll be interested if you have read any of these books.

If you haven't read Mr. Yousef's book, start there, it's truly a challenging and powerful story and ever so pertinent to trouble stalking our globe.  I am already thinking of rereading it.


By the way, each of these books had an acknowledged co-writer:
Katie Davis with Beth Clark
Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy
Mosab Hassan Yousef with Ron Bracken

Book Review: What I Saw in California by Edwin Bryant 1848

I am near the end of  reading  What I Saw in California   by Edwin Bryant, pub.1848.  

His journey begins  when he leaves his home in Louisville Kentucky on the 18th of April, 1846  and his journal begins when he reaches the town of Independence, Missouri where he will buy a yoke of oxen and  yoke himself up with other travelers set to leave for the west on May 1st, 1846. 

It is a real log, as he says, "My design is to give a truthful  and not an exaggerated and fanciful account of the occurrences of the journey, and of the scenery, capabilities and general features of the  countries through which we shall pass, with incidental sketches of the leading characteristics of their populations."(p. 18) 

 I have enjoyed his documentation greatly.  Without my having to more than imagine the incredible toil,  he took me, with his words, across plains and over mountains, through wet nights on cold ground. He shared the taste of limpid waters, cold springs joyfully found, the comfort of bird song in lonely corridors, the relief of finding grasses rich with nourishment for their animals, and the heft and potential of soils he described as argillaceous ( Yes, I had to look this word up!).   

    It is June 22nd, 2014 as I write my post.  By the third week of  June in 1846, Bryant's party had already changed out oxen for mules and horses and reached the Platte River in Nebraska where they camp, the night of  summer solstice,  on the river banks  about three miles from a 300 to 500 foot high and mile wide rock formation known as "Chimney Rock"  that has been in their sight all day.  Mr. Bryant thought it looked much like architectural ruins and although he describes it rather well, as he does all the environs, he writes this the following day.

"June 22- The rain poured down in torrents about one o'clock this morning. and the storm continued to rage with much violence for several hours...

If I could I would endeavor to describe to the reader by the use of language, a picture presented this morning at sunrise, just as we were leaving our encampment, among these colossal ruins of nature.  But the essay would be in vain.  No language, except that which is addressed directly to the eye, by the pencil and brush of the artist, can portray even a faint outline of its almost terrific sublimity.  A line of pale and wintry light behind the stupendous ruins, ( as they appeared to the eye,) served to define their innumerable shapes, their colossal grandeur, and their gloomy and mouldering magnificence. Over us and resting upon the summits of these, were the black masses of vapor, whose impending weight appeared ready to fall and crush every thing beneath them...." ( p.103)

I was encouraged by this book as to the value of simple daily writing.  I was reminded of the great efforts many made to come to a land that is so often taken for granted and despoiled rather than appreciated and stewarded as it should be.  And when Edwin Bryant ends his daily scribbling with an estimate of the miles traveled " Distance 10 miles." I  hardly know what to feel.  I am one who can traverse so many miles so quickly and not even feel the wind or weather in my air conditioned car...amazing...and yet...

Black Butte a 6334 ft lava dome in the Cascade Range of California  

I intend to next post photographs of a trip we recently made in that car to visit Grandma Beth  then some friends, on to my brother and his wife on their  ranch  near the Oregon border and then, by way of  Mount Lassen Park, east to Reno, Nevada to some aunties. Imagine how many words Edwin Bryant might have dispensed with if he had downloadable pixels at his disposable.  Maybe I will let the wordy Mr. Bryant influence me, and I'll web-log away as the slide show unfolds.  But this review, meant to entice you to a good read, is all for this morn. (Distance...oh, so many miles) 

with best wishes,

Jeannette

Page references to paper back ( ISBN 0-8032-6070-9) Complete work  also available for free on line at archive.org.

An August Post before it is History

Just begin...

as the month of August ends...

Do you ever read the last page of a book and then rush back to reread the opening lines?

Hartnell Professional Center  Monterey, California

                                         

On my way in for an ultra sound of an elbow the other day,  I was so struck with presence of the building I stopped and took a number of pictures.   The entrance grounds, the building, the blue sky, the oak boughs above the path are a bit of medicine all in themselves.  

This photo was taken from my seat in the waiting area.  I saw a photo of  Clint Eastwood  unveiling a plaque and later read that this building also houses the Clint Eastwood Youth Program, for youth needing to recover from substance abuse.  I saw Clint last night,  not here in town, but on television as he spoke at the Republican National Convention using something reminiscent of the psychotherapeutic empty chair gestalt method. The theory emphasizes that in order to get  fully into the experiential present moment, so you can go forward in life, you may have to extricate yourself from  webs of relationships that have formed your past, without the help of those significant others, and hence you address an empty chair.  Recovery is a big theme in our time.

Also hanging on the walls of  Hartnell Professional Center,  are a number of  large oil paintings,  gifts from local estates, of the colorful early settlers of old Monterey.  Monterey was the first capital of California, from 1776 to 1822  under Spain and then when Mexico achieved independence from Spain, Monterey was the Mexican capital of California.  Spain had not allowed foreign traders in California, but Mexico opened the ports for trade.  It was in the same year, 1822, that the namesake for this building, William Hartnell  arrived and began his first California ventures in the cattle business and later he began a school for  boys.  You can't live in this area and  not know his name as there is a street, a park and schools named after him, but his story is not fully available and questions of accuracy abound.  I suppose that isn't unusual, is it?   Well, Monterey was not chosen as the capitol when statehood arrived for California in 1849...but it is still a capital little city.

But back to August while it is still the present, for it is about to become history itself.  August gave us a few, and some of our first, sunny days in a good long time. As I mentioned fog on my one and lonely several July posts,  I feel as if I must really share some of the August glory.  Fog is not a hardship like so many of the extremes many regions face, but when it lifts it certainly lifts more than itself.

From Scenic Road in Carmel ...those rocks on the left are the tip of Point Lobos.

Last weekend we climbed down

                                              through the creek...

                                         to a neighboring beach were there was not even a footprint in the sand.

                                             

And later back at home, Mark set the table under the redwoods and cooked our dinner on a fire...now that felt like a summer day.

August 2012...people came and went...one of the guests who left early bequeathed to us tickets to an event we have never had on our personal horizon, the 62nd Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. While we have enjoyed the free parade of antique cars down the Costal Route, we had never been to see the competition exhibit on the 18th fairway of the golf course as automobiles have never been an interest or hobby for either of us.  I learned that Monterey Peninsula is still an open port...by inviting car enthusiasts from all over the world the Concours creates a source of support for many people in need...Prior to this year, donations to charitable organizations exceed 15 million dollars.   As we wandered around the relics of years past, we were also aware of  how many jobs this expensive event creates.   I took a lot of pictures and post a few here for your entertainment.

The cars from India, the "Maharaja cars" were a big attraction and were given the honored spot of the waterside edge of the fairway.  This  award winning 1924 Rolls-Royce  belongs to the Maharana Arvind Singh Mewar of the Palace in Udaipur.  

Saffron colored-a symbol of bravery

The local Carmel Pinecone did a story, "Indian royalty make grand impression at Concours" that unearthed interesting details about the1932 Rolls known as the Star of India.

The grandson of the original owner has repurchased the car after its  44 year exile in Europe and will now return it to India as a present to his father on the occasion of his 75th birthday. 

I liked this green car...

but in one of the merchandise halls I saw the car that is probably closest to my speed.

We never had to go to school in August, but I hear that many schools are already open.

I have seen signs lately urging people to "Please Drive as if Your Children Live Here" which strikes me as a good admonition, not only for driving with such awareness, but to live with an awareness of the children of the future.

History is in the making...and 

September will be here tomorrow.

Destination East of Eden

She made it to the railway station...

had a ticket for her destination...  

( shades of  Simon and Garfunkel )

This picture is actually on the other end of the railroad line where we were awaiting her arrival.  She boarded a train early in the morning in San Diego which took her to Santa Barbara where the northbound passengers were transferred to a bus for the rest of the ride; and the bus was late.  Now we were  sitting in the railway station until we started  poking around the old Southern Pacific yard .

If you have ever eaten salad in the USA from greens you didn't grow yourself,  chances are you have  eaten lettuce from Salinas, California reputed to grow about  80% of the lettuce in the United States.

Salinas, named for its many salty marshes, is  a valley famous not only for lettuce and other produce grown year round, but for one of it sons, author  John Steinbeck, who was born in Salinas in 1902.  Steinbeck wrote many novels, including the famous The Grapes of Wrath and my personal favorite of his,  a saga of the forces of good and evil, East of Eden,   set in the Salinas valley.  Steinbeck's  character, Adam Trask, is depicted as being one of the first  to ship lettuce wrapped in paper and iced, across the country.

Being at the railroad station made me think of scenes in that book.  It is definitely a book I've been willing to read more than once and maybe it is time to give it another spin...or maybe at least rent the James Dean movie again.  If you haven't read the book, read the book first...as good as the movie is the book is a whole other experience.

The sun was out, as you can see and I took a picture

                                                                      of this tree

                                          and of this tree too, the  California Pepper Tree that we had parked under.

                                        It was after five pm on Sunday afternoon and the place was pretty quiet but 

 apparently I too was being photographed as I wandered around snapping shots of 

historic luggage

and flowers in the garden of the two preserved historic houses neighboring the station,

                                                    and a "ride control."

and finally in my view finder...

there was who we were waiting for!     Way worth the wait and  just in time for Father's Day.

Garlands of Flowers and the Sacred Charges of Memorial Day

         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“..gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime...let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.”  -General John Logan, General Order No 11, 5 May 1868

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturday early afternoon in the sun out  front of the cottage at Searock, Mark is learning a Tommy Emmanuel song on his guitar called “Half Way Home.”  The flowers I’ve tended here make me feel half way home myself.  When we were in town earlier it was very busy, busy enough to remind us how good it is to just sit still.  

 It's “Memorial Day Weekend,”  and for many it is a three day chance to travel and party.  Perhaps those for whom the day was originally set aside to honor, those who served our country and sacrificed their very lives, would understand the nation’s search for freedom, joy and adventure when three days without work or school are joined together.

 This sun is more than the meteorologist predicted for today but the sky is not all blue; the horizon is milky layers of gray and cream white and the waters of the Pacific are shimmering with light and  shadows. We  have another Saturday errand to do, but as this sun is but a passing hour  we'll wait until the rain is closer.


 I’m encircled with flowers. There are small low blooms, tall fragrant iris, the columbine- each orange petal distinct in shape and curl- and white roses open and clustered so thickly I almost can’t see them as single flowers.  There are peach and golden rose buds and lavender, squat and purple blue in its prime.  One lone poppy gleams in front of the velvet violet salvia that the hummingbirds are so drawn to. 


I am reminded of times I've  bought little red poppies from veterans to commemorate this day. Anymore it seems as if this weekend is generally treated as simply a herald of the coming  summer and with all the harsh weather the country has endured, such a herald is a welcome call.  I've had my own heralds of late.  Yesterday a silver jumping of light alerted me to a school of dolphins moving north, and I’ve lost  count of the pelicans who’ve returned and made my heart leap.  

Earlier  this morning, I watched a woodpecker, quite well dressed with snowy white bib, handsome dark wings and red cap, drink and bathe in the deeper of the two bird baths.  As soon as  I moved behind my window in stealthy attempt to get my camera, he flew.

I look up from the page  where I am scribbling these thoughts and see the blooming maple blossoms bobbing with the breath of the waters below.  

The redwoods are tipped with the tender green of new growth and the limbs hang long and layered like a skirt over strong brown legs.  Lobelia and Santa Barbara Daisies push their way out of the beds and tangle in the amongst the ferns and foxgloves.  Many are the heralds of the new season.

The sounds of  traffic on the coastal route,  heavier  due to the three day weekend, remind us again that Monday is Memorial Day.  We both try to remember when Memorial Day was changed to a three day Federal Holiday?  Is it Memorial day that was originally called Decoration Day?  Neither of us were confident that  we knew or rightly remembered the origin and history of the holiday. I went inside to my computer to research the history and meaning of this day set aside.  I found this page on ways to  observe Memorial Day and on the banner was this quote : 

“..gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime...let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us as sacred charges upon the nation’s gratitude, the soldier’s and sailor’s widow and orphan.”  -General John Logan, General Order No 11, 5 May 1868

I stepped back outside  to tell Mark what I had learned.  We had already planned to fly the flag, but I didn't know it was protocol to fly it at half mast until noon on Memorial Day.  I also learned about the  origin of the red poppies I  had remembered  buying from disabled veterans.  

It's been a sweet Saturday reprieve.  The rain  has held off.  The air is warm and wafts with  many mingled scents; peppermint and lavender, the big bay laurel leaves I pluck to flavor sauces and soups, and there's the cypress and roses, iris and salt breeze too. The air is good.  The earth is waking from her slumber and those that may are eager to venture out. 

 I pray  safe journeys for  Memorial weekend  travelers and hope that we as people do continue to commemorate the dead who have served not only with the choicest  flowers of spring but by keeping all our sacred charges...and may those who sacrificed be much more than half way home....

                                                          ~~~~~

Pinnacles National Monument ~ A Dynamic Western Landscape

We thought we were a little crazy, a little overly optimistic, looking for an outdoor adventure. The weather wasn't promising...it rained off and on as we approached the western entrance to Pinnancles National Monument.  I hadn't visited this park since the 1960's and Mark had never been.

I forgot my camera, but Mark had his and we passed it back and forth frequently.

The Pinnacles rise up east of California's central Salinas Valley.  Leaving the valley, the road climbs through rolling hills of chaparral at the feet of the Gabilan Mountains.  The Pinnacles are believed to be the remains of the ancient Neenach Volcano some 195 miles to the south.  Imagine this, the giant San Andreas Fault split the volcano and the Pacific Plate crept north, carrying the Pinnacles.

The rains have made lovely greens along the creek waters.  We started up with extra jackets, the ratty kind we keep in the back of the car for emergencies and shifts in the weather.

The artistry of water and wind continue to shape these structures.

It rained a bit on us  as we made our way up to Hawkes Peak.  The colors in the subdued light were stunning and then the sun came out and danced new colors before our eyes. 

The monoliths, towerlike spires, sheer-wall canyons and caves of talus rise into the day...a seemingly stand still moment of the once and future dynamics of erosion, earthquake faults and shifting tectonic plates.

 
 
Oh, California!



 

A wall flower in front of its own stone wall.

The wild flowers are only beginning to bloom.  We saw shooting stars and tiny white milk maids on their slender stalks.  Some blue and purple lupines are blooming and the yellow bush poppies and white ceanothus grace the higher trails. 
   
We enjoyed the soaring birds throughout the day. Co-incidently this morning's local paper has an article on the Pinnacles: "CONDOR COUPLE LAY EGG" the Monterey Herald headlines read.  A male condor residing in Big Sur where he was released in 2004, without the aid  of any internet or televised dating service, flew east 30 miles to court a  female condor who was released at the Pinnacles in 2004. Her egg is believed to be the first laid within the park boundaries in more than a century.  There is a condor cam you can check out on the park website.
 

We saw a good deal of large cat scat on the trail but made no sightings of bob cats or mountain lions.  I wonder if they sighted us.  I did bring home some baby bob cat postcards.   Purchases of postcards, books and cloth bags  from the Western National Parks Association located in a tiny hut where the ranger takes the entrance fee, support educational and scientific research programs at the park.

 

The sun had plenty of clouds to pop behind and we hurried a bit on our way down from the peak as the sun was dropping in the sky.  It was a dark ride home and as we neared the coast a heavy rain  fell.  The two and a half dry and light hours on the trail were a lovely way to spend my XXst birthday!