OLLI Course on Bay Area Journalism

I'm looking forward to teaching a course, starting in late January, for UC Berkeley's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI). It's called "The Rest of the Story: Radical and Alternative Journalism in California, 1939-2009."

The idea is to survey California's key outlets for political journalism--including KPFA, Ramparts, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Daily Kos, and the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR)--to better understand our niche in the national media ecology.

To help us do that, I've invited Peter Schrag, Larry Bensky, Adam Hochschild, David Weir, and Susan Gardner (executive editor of Daily Kos) to join me in a conversation with OLLI's members.

It's an exciting prospect to speak with people who have made such huge contributions over the years. And many of these folks were involved with two or more key organizations. Adam wrote for Ramparts before he started Mother Jones. Larry was also with Ramparts before he landed at KPFA. David wrote for Rolling Stone (see image above) before he co-founded CIR. Peter has written for The Nation for decades, including during the McWilliams Era, in addition to editing the editorial page of the Sacramento Bee. So I imagine we'll get some interestingly layered perspectives.

To sign up for the course, click here.

Ramparts News

Yesterday was a good day for A Bomb in Every Issue.

Rose Aguilar interviewed me for KALW's "Your Call." The program should air in January.

Tom Gallagher posted a favorable review on his blog, Demockracy.

I learned that the WELL, the birthplace of the online community movement, will feature the book for two weeks in February.

I received a message from Ellen Adler, publisher of The New Press, who said orders for the book were strong.

And, to top it off, the San Francisco Chronicle named the book one of the 50 notable Bay Area books of the year.

Daniel McCarthy on Ramparts

I just read Daniel McCarthy's review of A Bomb in Every Issue. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but this is one of the most careful and appreciative readings I've come across.

I certainly wasn't expecting lines like this, on the early days of the New Left: "Richardson doesn’t waste words moralizing. He draws a picture and leaves the reader to draw conclusions—one of which might be that you could hardly blame a young man for wanting to take a blowtorch to the entire puking establishment."

McCarthy's conclusion: "Somebody should have listened to Thomas Merton." Writing for Ramparts, the Trappist monk and bestselling author urged (white) liberals to support the civil rights movement, warned of “an eventual civil war that might wreck the fabric of American society,” and feared “there might be a danger of Marxist elements ‘capturing’ the revolution."

Consider, too, McCarthy's description of Ramparts' editorial line--or, at least, one of its elements. Borrowing a term from Benjamin Tucker, McCarthy detects an "unterrified Jeffersonianism." Perfect.

The cover image above is from a past issue, but it conveys a bit more of the magazine's iconoclasm.

The 1968 Project

I spent yesterday at the Oakland Museum (now closed for renovations) discussing a forthcoming museum exhibition. The working title is "The 1968 Project," and its website is here. The Oakland Museum of California is a partner, and the curators wanted to go over the plans with a group of locals. I was lucky enough to be selected.

I won't rehearse the details of our discussion here, but I found it very stimulating. It's almost impossible not to plunge directly into the politics of that momentous year, and that's exactly what I did at first. I suppose we're still struggling over who gets to tell that story and how. But the worlds of science, sports, religion, literature, film, music, art, television, fashion and so on were clicking along, and though none of those realms was untouched by politics, I was glad to see some balances struck in the presentation.

Full disclosure: I'm not really a visual or spatial thinker. As a Skando Lutheran (raised that way, I mean), it's all about the word for me. So when I think about all the different considerations in putting together an exhibit like this, I marvel at the talent of those who can pull it off. So many choices to make! Not just on the "content," but on the presentation. My god, where do you start? Happily, this project is well on its way and should be fascinating.

Ramparts: History and Design

One of the best outcomes of the Ramparts book has been a renewed interest in the magazine's design. Several pieces have appeared, mostly online, and mostly focused on Dugald Stermer, the magazine's art director from 1964 to 1969. As I stress in the book, Dugald's contribution was an indispensable part of the magazine's success.

The most recent article comes from Steven Heller of the School of Visual Arts. An art director at the New York Times for over three decades, Heller interviewed Dugald and offers his own take on the magazine's successes and challenges.

It's always interesting to hear the experts discuss the magazine's look. My work as editorial director at PoliPointPress has taught me a few things about design, but I wish I knew more about it. A lot more. So I'm especially grateful for pieces like Heller's.

I already knew from my interview with Dugald that his son was the model for the April 1969 cover (above). What I didn't know was that his son's name was Chris, and that his reward for helping out with the cover was a trip to IHOP. That little bit of information came out in Jim Welte's piece for the Marin Independent-Journal.

Ramparts To Be Available Online!

This just in: Alexander Street Press has secured the rights to publish the full line of Ramparts magazine online. It will be available by subscription as part of The Sixties!, which includes primary documents and personal narratives that date from 1960 to 1974.

This will be a boon to researchers and aficionados everywhere. I heard about Alexander Street Press from Elliot Kanter, former editorial board member at Ramparts and now a librarian at UC San Diego. He suggested it to me when I interviewed him, I mentioned it to Guy Stilson (whose family owns the copyrights), and it turned out to be a good match.

Lo-Cal Swing

I'm off to Southern California this weekend for three events. I'll join Bob Scheer at all three, and Bob and I will appear with Scott Ritter and Iraq veteran Georg-Andreas Pogany at two of those.

The first event is in Venice on Saturday, Dec. 5. It's called "War, Media, and the Plight of the Veterans." We'll do it again on Sunday afternoon in Pasadena. Here's the link with more info: http://www.theveteransproject.org/?page_id=15.

The third event is also in Pasadena on Sunday. Bob and I will appear at All Saints Episcopal Church at 10 a.m. to talk about Ramparts magazine and A Bomb in Every Issue. More info here: http://www.allsaints-pas.org/site/PageServer?pagename=new_worship_splash.

Ramparts Story in Marin I-J

I was in Palm Desert with family when the Marin Independent-Journal ran a front-page (!) article on Ramparts magazine. The Contra Costa Times ran the same piece.

Jim Welte interviewed me but also came up with new material by checking with art director Dugald Stermer (who used to live in Mill Valley) and Marin resident Bill Turner, the former FBI agent and Ramparts staff writer.

The photograph was Jeff Vendsel's idea. He had me lie on the floor in my entry way with magazines scattered on the floor around me.

Pamuk and McWilliams

I enjoyed Lewis MacAdams's piece on Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk's stroll through downtown Los Angeles. Evidently, Pamuk relished Carey McWilliams's inscription in Pershing Square. "This is the only city I've been in," he laughed delightedly, "where a guy writes horrible things about the town and the town is so proud of him they put his quote in the park!"

Gustavo on C-Mac--and Orange County

Carey McWilliams has many fans, but few are more ardent--and productive--than Gustavo Arellano.

Gustavo's latest contribution to Gunkist Memories notes that McWilliams continues to outperform Orange County historians, especially when it comes to the 1936 citrus strike and the even more consequential Mendez vs. Westminster decision, which McWilliams said might "sound the death knell of Jim Crow in education."

I See Hawks in L.A.

As usual, my Lo-Cal swing produced some unexpected benefits. One was appearing in Marina Del Rey with I See Hawks in L.A.

Dave Alvin (whom my daughters and I saw at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this year) describes the band as "a talented, literate bunch of soulful musicians" creating "honest and wise roots music for the ages."

Before Bob Scheer and I went on with Jay Levin, founder of LA Weekly, we had a chance to visit with Paul Lacques. In the pic, he's second from the left. Later, I swapped a copy of the Ramparts book and an undisclosed sum of cash for four CDs. Then I listened to them on the drive up I-5. Good driving music, and many superb tunes.

I especially like "Good and Foolish Times" from the "Hallowed Ground" CD. First rate, as fine as anything I've heard recently. (It moved me off my obsession with Neil Young's "Down by the River.") But there are other catchy ones, too, including "Carbon Dated Love," "Hallowed Ground," "Raised by Hippies," etc.

Bonnie Simmons, are you listening? Please consider giving these guys some KPFA air time and inviting them to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass next year.

The New Dust Bowl?

You've probably seen these signs, too. My father told me about them after a drive up I-5 months ago. I saw them more recently while returning from Los Angeles.

Congress created a dust bowl? My father accepted the claim on its face. I figured it had something to do with the attempt to balance the health of the Delta with agribusiness's insatiable thirst for cheap water.

According to Josh Harkinson's piece in the current issue of Mother Jones, the situation is a bit more complicated. (Sorry, can't seem to link to the story.) Yes, the feds have cut water deliveries and are trying to protect the delta smelt. But the valley is suffering for other reasons as well. The economy has been decimated by the housing bust and the recession more generally. Bankruptcy filings are double the national average. And there's a prolonged drought in progress: thus, less water to go around. Since agribusiness consumes something like 80 percent of California's water, it was bound to feel the effects. It takes a little doing to pin a drought on Congress, but there you have it.

CSA's own Dick Walker is quoted in the piece on the farmers' refusal to acknowledge the long-term water supply problems. "The dollar signs overwhelmed the warning signs," Dick said. He knows a little bit about the subject; his book, The Conquest of Bread, surveys 150 years of agribusiness in California.

While you're visiting the Mother Jones website, don't forget the Ramparts book excerpts.

Trumbo: The Movie

I rented Trumbo last night. Yes, I realize I'm a bit late to this party. I didn't see the play, which might have prepared me better for this film. In particular, I didn't realize how much of it would consist of dramatic readings of Trumbo's writings, especially his correspondence.

That approach certainly features the power of his prose. A withering letter to his daughter's school principal, for example, is a tour de force. (Apparently Mitzi was ostracized for her father's political views.) The film also includes a poem composed to his son Christopher on his tenth birthday, which Trumbo evidently spent in federal prison for contempt of Congress. (He did indeed have contempt for that Congress.)

But I admit to some slight disappointment that the film didn't hew to the conventions of straight documentary filmmaking. The dramatic readings by Hollywood celebrities probably raised the project's profile, but they make the film less useful for me and my purposes at San Francisco State. I've been looking for a film to replace Hollywood on Trial, which also contains remarkable footage of Trumbo but is in poor condition and expensive to replace. This one offers far less historical detail about HUAC, Hollywood, McCarthyism, etc.

I doubt the filmmaker's will be crestfallen by this verdict. Just as well.

Not surprisingly, the film passes over a remarkable detail in the Trumbo family history: namely, that Mitzi dated Steve Martin while they were in college. Martin's exposure to the family was something of an eye-opener for him. Check out Born Standing Up and consider the serendipities of American popular culture.

David Kipen, now at the National Endowment for the Arts, alerted me to another remarkable detail this week. Trumbo, John Fante, and Carey McWilliams all left Colorado at approximately the same time, bound for Los Angeles to cut a swath. There were giants in the earth in those days.

Time Magazine: The Dream Endures

Time magazine takes a bit of a drubbing in the Ramparts book, but at least it has the good sense to quote Carey McWilliams in its current piece, "The End of California: Dream On!"

Michael Grunwald's article falls back on the (seemingly) ancient tension between utopian and dystopian representations of the state. In the popular imagination, California is either heaven on earth or an apocalyptic mess.

Sometimes the reality is more prosaic: for example, the predictable volatility that results from relying on sales and income taxes to fund public services. (Texas, which doesn't tax income but manages to collect sensible property taxes, seems to be doing better.)

Sorry, did I kill your buzz?

I'll probably get plenty of the prosaic version today when I attend a UC Berkeley event called "What Ails California?" It's a mini-conference hosted by the Institute of Governmental Studies and Department of Political Science.

Ramparts Dispatch

Many thanks to everyone who came out for the Los Angeles and Bay Area events. Special thanks to Bob Scheer, who went out of his way to recommend the book to various live and radio audiences. All props to Michael Sexton, who shot this photograph of Warren Hinckle at Vesuvio Cafe.

Here's an incomplete roundup of the lit, media, events, etc.

Reviews:

*Jack Shafer's New York Times piece
*Dwight Garner's New York Times article
*Erik Himmelsbach's review in the Los Angeles Times
*Peter Collier's take in the New Criterion
*Sol Stern's piece in City Journal
*Daniel McCarthy's essay in the American Conservative
*Elbert Ventura's insightful review in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas
*Robert Fulford's denunciation of the magazine and its legacy in the National Post
*Patrick Ward's generous assessment in Socialist Review
*Frances Dinkelspiel's SFGate (and Ghost Word) piece
*Randy Shaw's review on Beyond Chron
*Ron Jacobs's take on CounterPunch
*Rick Kleffel's piece (and podcast) for "The Agony Column" on bookotron.com
*Jonah Raskin's article for the San Francisco Chronicle
*Randy Michael Signor's review, Chicago Sun-Times
*John Lombardi's freewheeling essay in Las Vegas Weekly
*Jane Isay's endorsement on Huffington Post
*Clint Hendler's take in the Columbia Journalism Review
*Karl Whitney's review in 3:AM Magazine, based in Paris
*Tom Gallagher's review on his blog, Demockracy
*Bill Castanier's essay in City Pulse
*Treehugger pulled together a cross-section of related articles and selected quotes about Ramparts and the book.

Interviews:

*Andy Ross for Ask the Agent
*Asawin Suebsaeng for College Reporter
*Jamie Glazov for FrontPage
*Marty Flynn on Hunter S. Thompson Books
*Robert Newman on Dugald Stermer for the Society of Publication Designers
*Aaron Leonard for History News Network
*Jim Welte for the Marin Independent-Journal.

Excerpts and Related Articles:

*Chapter 1 is on the New York Times website
*An adaptation of Chapter 3 appeared in California History
*Truthdig posted an essay adapted from Chapter 5
*An essay based on Chapter 6 appears on ColdType
*Mother Jones assembled some key passage for its website
*California magazine has a piece in the Fall issue called "Radical Slick."

Media Appearances:

July 29, "Politics with Norman Solomon," KWMR.
Aug. 19, "This Is America" with Jon Elliott, San Diego 1700 AM.
Aug. 23, "Sunday Sedition" with Andrea Lewis, KPFA.
Sept. 15, "America Offline," KWMR, 90.5 FM.
Sept. 15, "The John Rothmann Show", KGO AM 810.
Sept. 26, "Edge of Sports" with Dave Zirin. XM Channel 167.
Oct. 11, "The Agony Column" with Rick Kleffel, KUSP (Santa Cruz).
Oct. 12, "A Public Affair" with Norman Stockwell, WORT (Madison).
Oct. 12, "Connect the Dots" with Lila Garrett, KPFK.
Oct. 13, "Uprising" with Sonali Kolhatkar, KPFK.
Oct. 14, "Four O'Clock with Jon Wiener," KPFK.
Oct. 16-22, "CounterSpin," 150 stations nationally.
Oct. 22, Truthdig interview (video) with Kasia Anderson and Robert Scheer.
Nov. 10, "The Politics of Culture" with Will Lewis, KCRW.
Nov. 29, "Media Matters with Bob McChesney," WILL-AM 580.
Dec. 9, "No Alibis" with Elizabeth Robertson, KCSB.
Jan. 7, "Your Call" with Rose Aguilar, KALW.

Bay Area Events:

Sept. 16, California Studies Dinner Seminar, 2521 Channing Way, Berkeley, 7 p.m.
Sept. 21,Peninsula Peace and Justice Center with Steve Keating, First Presbyterian Church, 1140 Cowper St., Palo Alto, noon and 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 23, City Lights book party with Warren Hinckle and Larry Bensky, Vesuvio Cafe, 255 Columbus, San Francisco, 7 p.m.
Sept. 24, Berkeley Arts & Letters with Robert Scheer, introduction by Susan Griffin, First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 25, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, with Robert Scheer, at Lowell Bergman's master's project seminar.
Sept. 25, Book Passage with Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, 7 p.m.
Sept. 29, Capitola Book Cafe, 1475 41st Avenue, Capitola, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 22, San Francisco State University (Yumi Wilson's journalism class, Humanities 312), 12:30 p.m.
Nov. 3, Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way, Berkeley, 7 p.m.
Jan. 23, San Francisco Main Public Library, 100 Larkin St., Latino/Hispanic Meeting Rooms A+B, Lower level, San Francisco, 11 a.m.

Los Angeles Events:

Oct. 5, Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., W. Hollywood, 7 p.m.
Oct. 6, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, Huntington Library, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, noon.
Oct. 6, USC with Robert Scheer's class
Oct. 7, USC with Robert Scheer's class
Oct. 9, Village Books with Derek Shearer, 1049 Swarthmore Avenue, Pacific Palisades, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 10, "The State and Future of Journalism in America" with Robert Scheer and Jay Levin, founder of LA Weekly. Music by I See Hawks in L.A. Hosted by Jeff Norman, The Warehouse, 4499 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, 5 p.m.
Dec. 5, "War, Media, and the Plight of Veterans," with Scott Ritter, Robert Scheer, and Georg-Andreas Pogany. Venice United Methodist Church, 2210 Lincoln Blvd, Venice, 2 p.m. Also Dec. 6 at the Woman's Club of South Pasadena, 1424 Fremont Avenue, South Pasadena, 2 p.m.
Dec. 6, Rector's Forum with Robert Scheer, All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid, Pasadena, 10 a.m.

I'll use this space to keep the calendar and article news up to date. If you have ideas for events--campus and bookstore talks, etc.--please pass them along.

My New Passion

In my never-ending quest for new and unremunerative activities, I filled in as guest host on "Politics with Norman Solomon" at KWMR last Wednesday and again yesterday. What can I say? I love public radio, and I was honored that Norman asked. My reward was two drives to Point Reyes Station, the pleasure of meeting the station's staff, and the chance to visit with Dan Weintraub about the California state budget.

Dan is a real pro, by the way; not only a shrewd observer of the state political scene, but also a lucid, interesting, and polished speaker on a broad range of topics. After he explained the budget debacle and discussed the recent special election, we spoke a bit about his book, Party of One: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of the Independent Voter.

As far as on-air mechanics, let's just say that I'm a work in progress. I'll get a little more practice later this month when I fill in for Jon Rowe on KWMR's "America Offline," which airs Tuesdays from 5:30 to 6:30. It looks like I'll have Sasha Abramsky, author of Breadline USA on June 23. I hope to have Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, on June 30. Marjorie is the author of two PoliPointPress books, Cowboy Republic and Rules of Disengagement.

David Ulin on Frances Kroll Ring

I'm not going to lie to you; I'd love to keep the Ramparts blurbs front and center for as long as possible. But today a David Ulin piece on Frances Kroll Ring swam into my ken, and I can't resist.

Fanatical readers of this blog will recall my telephone conversation with Frances, her book (Against the Current), and the film based on her experience (Last Call), where she was played memorably by Neve Campbell.

What? You don't recall? Frances was F. Scott Fitzgerald's secretary and later edited Carey McWilliams for Westways. Good God, people, pull it together. Maybe these links will jog your memory.

http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com/2006/08/f-scott-fitzgerald-and-frances-ring.html
http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com/2006/08/against-current.html
http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com/2006/12/last-call.html

More Ramparts blurbs

More blurbs for A Bomb in Every Issue:

“It’s a great delight to see this key chapter in the history of American journalism at last get the readable, judicious history it deserves. Ramparts touched the lives of far more people than its readers by paving the way for the rich universe of alternative media now open to us. Peter Richardson has told an important story, and told it well.”

— Adam Hochschild, Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley, and author of Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

“America’s muckraking tradition stretches back to the 1690s—but no publication better represented it than Ramparts. In the 1960s, it helped set a generation on fire, tore away a veil of hypocrisy in public life, and set new standards in editorial and design quality. Richardson’s tale brings the dead to life, and gives us a new understanding of how journalism changes the way we are and will be.”

— Richard Parker, Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Harvard University, and author of John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics

“Peter Richardson captures the extravagant idealism, brilliance, and shortcomings of the radical magazine Ramparts, whose hard-edged challenges to mainstream American politics and culture still resonate today. Entertaining and thought-provoking.”

— Eve Pell, award-winning investigative reporter and author of We Used to Own the Bronx: Memoirs of a Former Debutante

“Peter Richardson does a fine job fairly recreating the brilliant and crazy atmosphere—the ingenuity and bravado, farce and tragedy—that resulted when the mad geniuses, talented radicals, hustlers, hucksters, and charlatans of Ramparts dived together into the Sixties’ white water cascade. It’s as if Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, and Doris Lessing had decided to collaborate on a true life story.”

— Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology, Columbia University, and author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage

New Ramparts Blurbs

The New Press alerted me to two new blurbs for the Ramparts book yesterday. One is from Douglas Brinkley, whose publications include edited volumes of Hunter Thompson's correspondence and a recent piece on Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone. Yep, that's Sean Penn in the background.

The other blurb is from Lowell Bergman. You've seen his work on Frontline, he teaches journalism at Berkeley, and he was played by Al Pacino in The Insider. For another look at The Speech from that film, click here.

***

"What an incredible story Peter Richardson has told! Ramparts magazine turned the Sixties on its head with a high-octane combination of avant-garde satire and gumshoe investigative reporting. A Bomb in Every Issue is an excellent history that shouldn't be ignored. I can't recommend it enough."

—Douglas Brinkley

“Peter Richardson has done a brilliant job bringing to life the incredible story of Ramparts, a publication that changed journalism and the world it reported on. This book will become required reading for all those concerned about the current crisis in the world of news. The legacy of Ramparts, as Richardson tells it, is that you can always lose money and produce dynamite journalism. In fact, reporting, editing and promoting a truly important story in the public interest may require it!

"A Bomb in Every Issue makes clear that Ramparts in its prime was a vortex of flamboyance and critical intelligence. Out of that maelstrom came reporting that truly changed America. It’s a story that, I trust, will soon be repeated. My bet is that when it happens, this now defunct child of the ‘60s as presented here will be a guiding light for its progeny.

"What makes this book even better is that it has not ignored or downplayed the foibles of Ramparts’ founders and chief architects. It is a cautionary tale told with economy that will be a touchstone for the new journalism, the new Ramparts of the 21st century.”

—Lowell Bergman

My Chronicle

When I was growing up, my family read the San Francisco Chronicle. We chuckled over Art Hoppe's column and breezed through Herb Caen's. My mom liked Stanton Delaplane, and Charles McCabe was like an honorary weird uncle. My brothers and I delivered the Oakland Tribune in the El Cerrito hills, but the Chronicle was our paper of record.

Bay Area residents like to complain about the Chronicle--this is our birthright. But when I returned to the Bay Area in 1999, I probably read the Contra Costa Times more often. I even picked up the Examiner for a while, since it was free and included the New York Times crossword puzzle.

But I knew the Chronicle was struggling, and I wanted vaguely to help, so when a guy outside Safeway offered me a trial subscription, I went for it. Three days a week for two months, $16. I paid cash.

The delivery was spotty--three times I plied my driveway in vain--but more important, I found little I wanted to read. I already get a lot of news from other sources, and I don't care to read about food, restaurants, cars, parties, or the opera. I glanced at the opinion, sports, and real estate sections, but I actively resented the scant attention to books. I realize most dailies don't even have a Sunday book review, but God almighty, give us something to read already.

The trial period elapsed, but the paper kept coming. I received a bill and ignored it; I was paid up, and I didn't want to renew at more than twice the introductory rate. More papers. I went online and learned that subscriptions continue until you cancel them. Naturally, it was impossible to do that online. Two more bills arrived, and I sent them back marked "cancel." More papers.

Finally I got a telephone call from a guy who wanted to sell me a subscription. I told him the whole story, and he offered to cancel the outstanding balance and set me up with a Sunday-only subscription. OK. Then he asked me: are you getting the paper now? Well, yeah. He couldn't sell me a subscription until I canceled my old one. He gave me an 800 number to call.

Which I did for some reason. I spoke to a helpful young woman with a Filipino accent. She told me that my subscription was canceled and offered to erase the outstanding balance. Wonderful. I asked if she was in the Philippines. Yes, Manila.

Have your irony flares fired yet? Maybe it's me, but it seems odd to call halfway around the world to help save your local newspaper.

May 2009 update: I got the paper today, about three months after my subscription expired. I look forward to reading it.

Louise Dyble on the Golden Gate Bridge

Don't take this title literally. Louise isn't on the Golden Gate Bridge, but she was on Jon Rowe's KWMR show last night talking about Paying the Toll, her history of the bridge. And, more specifically, the special district created to manage it.

I was in Point Reyes Station last night and heard a bit of the show. I also saw Jon, who mentioned some of the big stories Louise is sitting on.

One is that the bridge district killed the extension of BART into Marin County. I'd always thought that anti-growth forces were responsible for that.

What's ironic, of course, is that the bridge was constructed precisely to foster growth and development. That's why Ansel Adams and other Sierra Clubbers opposed it.

I see that Louise is blogging actively again, so I'm reposting that link on your starboard.

Green New Deal Redux

So we started our work last night in San Rafael. Norman Solomon and Lisa Maldonado, executive director of the North Bay Labor Council, co-chaired the first public hearing on the Green New Deal for the North Bay.

Harvey Smith kicked it off by discussing the connection between California's Living New Deal Project and our mission. Then we heard from local residents, small business people, and activists about a range of issues, especially the need to review Marin County's approach to waste, recycling, and water treatment.

IMHO, we're off to a good start.

Green New Deal for the North Bay

I start my career as a commissar--er, commissioner--this week. I agreed to serve on a grassroots initiative called the Green New Deal for the North Bay.

Norman Solomon describes the initiative in a Marin Independent-Journal piece today. One of the key goals is to integrate the labor and environmental agendas in Marin and Sonoma Counties.

Toward that end, we'll hold eight public hearings this month to hear from residents. The first hearing is in San Rafael on Friday.

In the fall, we'll hear from experts on water, housing, transportation, agriculture, and other areas. Then we'll write a report and launch a public dialogue on the findings.

L.A. Times Festival of Books

I'm trying to return from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. That's not as easy as it sounds. My Sunday night flight was delayed several hours, so I decided to bunk in Burbank last night.

But the festival is hard to leave for another reason. It's glorious to see so many readers and writers strolling the UCLA campus. Plus the panels are great, and the weather was gorgeous.

I also ran into a lot of friends: Malcolm Margolin, Sasha Abramsky, Frances Dinkelspiel, Cherilyn Parsons, Adrian Maher, etc. And I connected, in some cases for the first time, with some fellow authors. That includes Gustavo Arellano and Ernie Freeberg, whose Gene Debs bio I reviewed for the L.A. Times. That book, Democracy's Prisoner, was a finalist for the festival's book award in biography.

I also saw Randy Shaw, editor of Beyond Chron and author of Beyond the Fields, the UC Press book on the UFW organizers and their lasting influence. Randy and Ernie were on the same panel.

On Saturday night, Sasha and I attended a Truthdig panel and fundraiser. The featured guests were Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges, both of whom had plenty to say about American media and politics. Bob Scheer hosted the panel. Stanley Sheinbaum, Zuade Kaufman, and Peter Scheer were also there, and afterwards we repaired to Bob's digs for the post-panel wingding.

Unfortunately, I missed Frances's panel with Bill Deverell. I really wanted to make that--it also included D.J. Waldie, whom I've never met--but I ended up battling traffic to the Truthdig event downtown. It took me well over an hour (on Saturday afternoon) to get there. I arrived 30 minutes late, but I didn't miss anything, since Amy and Chris were caught in the same traffic. But I was riding good in my rented Mustang, so what the hell.

Silicon Valley--The Place

Silicon Valleys' staggering success, which depends on a new technological innovation every decade or so, fits a longstanding and powerful story about California that stretches back to gold rush. That story used to figure California as the Great Exception. Now it also seems more like the Great Template. What's happening here, we tell the rest of the world, will be happening near you soon.

But the Silicon Valley story tends to obscure at least as much as it reveals. Mostly it conceals the history (let's call it the people's history) and the everyday quality of life on the ground here. That part of the story is the focus of the California Studies Association conference I'm attending today at De Anza College.

I won't try to summarize the fine presentations I've heard here, but here's a little factoid for you. We usually talk about the San Francisco Bay Area. Makes sense, right? But the Census folks talk about the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland area. Yep, Santa Clara County is by far the most populous one in the nine-county Bay Area. It's also a huge economic engine. But I wouldn't dream of telling anyone I was from the San Jose area.

Hemingway on Lee, Part II

Mark Hemingway replied yesterday on National Review Online to the Barbara Lee post. I really do want to let the Ramparts book do the talking on this point, because the context is important. But he's probably right that my main beef, at least in this instance, is with Barbara Lee's comment on the death of Betty Van Patter.

Did I make too big a deal out of the mistake in Hemingway's review? Probably. After all, the piece was a book review, and the mistake was in Lee's book. In fact, I tried to correct that error last year, when I saw the book in galleys at Book Expo America. I pointed it out to the fellow in the publisher's booth, and he took down the info, etc. Then the book appeared with the same mistake.

After I saw the galleys, I mentioned this passage to Tamara Baltar, Betty's daughter, who also worked for Ramparts (and later, Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting). It was a difficult conversation for me; I can't imagine what it was like for Tamara. That made it easier for me to assign a lot of significance to the mistake--both in Lee's book and in Hemingway's review.

The more important point is what Lee writes about the Panthers and Betty. Lee implies that the government may have committed the murder and then blamed it on the Panthers: "This kind of tactic had been seen before and was known to have been used by the government’s anti-Panther COINTELPRO group." I'm not convinced that's what happened here, and neither are Betty's former colleagues at Ramparts. But COINTELPRO's legacy makes that kind of comment more or less predictable.

And it wasn't just the FBI. The CIA was also keeping an eye on domestic groups, including Ramparts after the magazine exposed some of the agency's covert operations in Vietnam. When a CIA agent briefed his boss on his plans for screwing up the magazine, the boss reportedly replied, "Eddie, you have a spot of blood on your pinafore." Much of this illegality was exposed later by former Ramparts contributor Sy Hersh in the New York Times.

I don't think either end of the ideological spectrum has a monopoly on virtue here, but in the meantime, I'd like to do my small part to keep the facts straight. Sometimes that's hard enough, and I appreciate Hemingway's prompt correction to his review.

National Review on Barbara Lee

Mark Hemingway of National Review Online posted a book review of Barbara Lee's Renegade for Peace & Justice with predictable results. Hemingway asks: "What exactly is wrong with her?"

Certainly Lee's recent visit to Cuba and her erstwhile connection to the Black Panthers are perfect grist for the right-wing mill. The review's title, "Comrade Barbara," is drawn from Bobby Seale's moniker for Lee after she became involved with the Black Students Union at Mills College.

Lee's book also figures in my Ramparts research, and on one of the points that Hemingway raises: her halfhearted defense of the Black Panthers in the murder of Betty Van Patter, the magazine's former bookkeeper. I won't rehearse the details here--that's what the book is for--but I don't think Lee's cursory discussion enhances her honor.

But let's not get too carried with Hemingway's argument, either. For one thing, he gets Betty's name wrong. He calls her Betty Van Tanner, thereby repeating Lee's mistake in the book. This despite the fact that Hemingway mentions David Horowitz's account of this brutal episode in Radical Son, which at least gets the names right.

I don't think I can credit anyone, left or right, whose control of the facts is that loose.

Speaking of National Review and its founder, William F. Buckley, some of us recall his television program, Firing Line. But did you know that Robert Scheer appeared on it? The title of that episode was "Is Ramparts Magazine Un-American?" If you know anything about the participants, you can imagine the tone of the exchange.

The Firing Line tapes are hard to find now--I had to visit the Hoover Institution to watch the Scheer episode--but I discuss that exchange in the book, whose publication date is September 8.

Secondhand Sounds Redux

Fanatical readers of this blog will recall that Secondhand Sounds, which airs on KCSB, is pushing back the frontiers of indie, R&B, and roots music broadcasting. What's less well known, perhaps, is that the show has moved to a new time slot: Wednesday from 6 to 8 a.m.

I know what you're thinking. Will this move dilute the fierce independence that helped the program dominate the airwaves every other Saturday between 4 and 6 a.m.? All I can say is, tune in and find out. You can catch the webcast at the KCSB link above. For those of you who are still fumbling around, trying to find out where the real action is, check the other link to see what you've missed. Just do it. Now.

We Used to Own the Bronx

Don't let the title fool you: Eve Pell's memoir, which features her privileged upbringing on the east coast, is also a fascinating portrait of San Francisco radical journalism during the 60s and 70s.

Eve traces her U.S. roots to the mid-17th century, when Thomas Pell received enormous parcels of land from the British crown and local Indians. When she says they used to own the Bronx, she really means it. Remember the book The Taking of Pelham 123 about the hijacked subway train? (If not, you'll get another shot at it with the John Travolta and Denzel Washington film this year.) Pelham is named after them, and they still have the right to claim a fat calf annually from the city of New Rochelle.

Over the years, the Pells have sold the land, married well, and lived very comfortably in WASPy bastions like Tuxedo Park. The family's public face, I suppose, has been U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, and their name still graces the student grants he cooked up in the Higher Education Act of 1965.

The California part of the story unfolds when Eve marries an architect based in San Francisco. There she begins working for Paul Jacobs and Saul Landau, who figure heavily in the development of Ramparts magazine. Her marriage dissolves when she begins to question many of the social and political conventions her family supported reflexively.

She goes on to work in the prison movement, meets George Jackson, and is brought face-to-face with a world that couldn't be less like the one she grew up in. Later, she crosses paths with former Ramparts editor David Horowitz, who, unbeknownst to her, is tacking hard right in his political voyage. That becomes a problem when Horowitz uses her as a source to discredit the movement she labored in for years.

I don't want to give away the whole story, which Eve tells briskly, honestly, and with a great knack for selection and emphasis. But in one up-tempo book, you get an ethnography of East Coast privilege and an insider's account of San Francisco movement journalism. That's good value, people.

Full disclosure: I interviewed Eve over the telephone for the Ramparts book. Though we've never met in person, she visited my home with her husband, who was my mother's boss at the Department of Labor in San Francisco.

Silicon Valley Event

Save the date: Friday, April 24. The California Studies Association is hosting an all-day conference called "Debugging the Silicon Dream: Real Life in a Virtual World" at De Anza College in Cupertino. Here's the description:

The Internet floats in the popular imagination like a disembodied utopia; the mecca of Silicon Valley rises out of nowhere, built by technological genius and entrepreneurial drive. In real life, however, these stories obscure more than they reveal. This conference aims to "ground" public discussion about the Internet, Silicon Valley, and high-tech California. The event will bring together scholars, artists, community leaders, and the broader public to explore both the real-world forces that shape these developments and their consequences for people and place.

Click here for more information: panels, speakers, schedule, etc. If you're a student in my San Francisco State class, you will receive extravagant credit toward your course participation grade for attending this. Free for students, but please register for food planning purposes.

Tom Braden ... and Ramparts Magazine

Tom Braden died this week. According to the Washington Post, he was head of the CIA's International Organizations Division, which secretly funded U.S. cultural, labor, and educational groups in an effort to thwart the spread of communism during the Cold War.

Ramparts exposed that funding in a 1967 article about the CIA's connection to the National Students Association. Braden defended the secret program, which he said was his idea, in an article for the Saturday Evening Post. The title of that article was "I'm Glad the CIA Is 'Immoral.'"

Braden went on to write Eight is Enough, which became a long-running situation comedy. He also appeared on "Crossfire," where he was the designated liberal. He was later replaced by Michael Kinsley.

Fante's 100th Birthday

Zocalo will host an event at the Hammer Museum this Tuesday to celebrate the 100th birthday of Los Angeles novelist and screenwriter John Fante. David Kipen will moderate a panel that includes Fante biographer Stephen Cooper. Fanatical readers of this blog will recall how highly I regard Steve and his work.

Fante was a close friend of Carey McWilliams, who claimed that he kept his companion "reasonably sober, away from the race tracks, draw poker sessions, opium dens and other low dives, properly confined to home and hearth and study and in regular attendance at mass."

Ramparts Piece in California History

I should be receiving page proofs soon for a piece that will run in California History. I was delighted to hear from editor Janet Fireman, who suggested I submit something from the Ramparts book. The essay is adapted from Chapter 3, "The Perilous Fight," which covers the 1964-67 period. That's when art director Dugald Stermer and Robert Scheer, who would eventually become editor-in-chief, signed on to the magazine.

Another boon: Shelly Kale, managing editor of California History, decided to feature the cover art from the July 1966 issue of Ramparts. It's Edward Sorel's "The Aviary [Hawkus Caucus Americanus]," which is really something. It looks like that will run on the cover of California History, too.

The Ramparts book is now in production, by the way. The publication date is September 8.

Latino Like Me

This seems like the right time to mention a blog produced by Tomas Summers Sandoval, whom I've come to know through the California Studies Association. The blog is called Latino Like Me, and I've put a live link on the honor roll to your right.

Tomas's blog is devoted to Chicano critical humanism, but you're liable to see just about anything there. I especially appreciated the point he made after Kellogg's Corn Flakes removed Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps from its cereal boxes; the problem, it seemed, was that Phelps was photographed smoking pot and therefore made a poor role model. Tomas posed a simple question: If it weren't for pot, who would eat Corn Flakes? I also like Tomas's theory that Lent is a vast conspiracy to get Catholics ready for swimsuit season.

Tomas's blog title plays on John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, the 1961 bestseller. Shortly after its publication, Griffin became involved in a new Catholic literary quarterly published in Menlo Park. It was called Ramparts, and within five years, it moved to San Francisco and became the nation's premier muckraker. (You may be hearing more about this soon.)

Heyday Books

I'm a big fan of Heyday Books, which Malcolm Margolin started 35 years ago, so I'm pleased that they launched a blog this week. I'll put a link on the blogroll to your starboard, too.

Heyday publishes on a wide range of California topics, and many of their books are gorgeous. I first started tracking them when I came across Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader. Since then, I've gotten to know their staff and some of their authors well. Check them out, I say.

Black Bear, Coyote, Humboldt County

Without really thinking about it, I started exploring a new aspect of the main theme in my San Francisco State class--the utopian impulse in California culture. The new wrinkle is the form that impulse takes in the northernmost part of the state.

My exploration started with the film "Humboldt County," which I finally saw on DVD a few weeks ago. It's about an emotionally shut-down medical student in Los Angeles who reconnects with the world after he stumbles upon an alternative (read: pot-growing) scene in Northern California. No need to rehearse the plot details here, but the people he meets are deeply ambivalent about the utopian--or is it dystopian?--community they've created.

Fast forward to a PoliPointPress book event here at Book Passage a couple of weeks ago. Peter Coyote joined some of us for dinner before Norman Solomon interviewed Reese Erlich about his new book. Turns out Book Passage had a copy of Peter's memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, which I've wanted to read for a while. I bought it, Peter signed it, and I recently read the passage about his experiences at Black Bear Ranch, a commune founded during the 1960s in Siskiyou County. Fascinating.

Today I discovered a related documentary, "Commune," which is devoted to the Black Bear Ranch story. It includes Peter and features the folks in his book. Again, the utopian impulse behind the commune produced deeply mixed results. I won't ruin it for any fanatical readers of this blog, but it's worth a look if you're interested in the California counterculture of this period.

Joe Mathews on Carey McWilliams

It's a double serving of McWilliams today in the Los Angeles Times. I touch on him in my review of the Mary Austin bio, and an article by Joe Mathews--New America Foundation fellow and former Times scribe--puts the state's current fiscal crisis in historical perspective by reading it against McWilliams's California: The Great Exception (1949). Very nicely done.

Secondhand Sounds

Oh, it's on now. Don't miss the new show on KCSB 91.9 FM, every other Saturday morning from 4 to 6 a.m. Hosted by Ashley Richardson, it runs an eclectic lineup of (mostly) American sounds from Al Green to Jeff Buckley to Pasty Cline. You can stream the webcast it if you don't live in the Santa Barbara area.

I did a little checking around and discovered that some of my friends hadn't heard about the show. Jeez, do I have to do everything around here?

Review of New Mary Austin Bio

The Los Angeles Times ran my review of the latest Mary Austin biography today. Written by Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, the book traces the unusual arc of Austin's career. After writing a slender masterpiece (The Land of Little Rain) while living in the Owens Valley in 1903, Austin achieved her dream of becoming a professional writer but rarely matched that early effort.

Austin was a big influence on Carey McWilliams, and though Goodman and Dawson mention the connection between the two shortly before Austin's death in 1934, they don't explore it thoroughly. It's worth noting, I think, that McWilliams learned about the Owens Valley water caper from Austin, who witnessed it firsthand. Writing about that episode in Southern California Country (1946), McWilliams eventually inspired Robert Towne's Oscar-winning screenplay for Chinatown.

I also suspect, but haven't confirmed, that Austin called McWilliams's attention to the great land and water empire of Miller and Lux, which figures prominently in Factories in the Field (1939). Again, Austin knew about Miller and Lux from her years living in the San Joaquin Valley in the late nineteenth century.

I enjoyed the Austin book as well as the chance to review it for the Times. (As Goodman and Dawson note, McWilliams wrote Austin's obituary for the paper.) She was a fascinating figure with a big personality, and The Land of Little Rain is an undisputed early classic of environmental literature. I say check it out--along with Goodman and Dawson's bio.

Peter Schrag

Peter Schrag's last regular column ran in the Sacramento Bee today. It won't be the last we hear of Peter, but this a great occasion to honor his achievement. In addition to editing the editorial page of the Bee for nineteen years and writing a column for twelve, Peter has written several influential books about California, including Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future (1998).

I read that book when I started at the Public Policy Institute of California, where Peter served on the advisory board. It made a big impression on me. In it, Peter argues that the state's demise began with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. Having capped the stablest source of public revenue, the state moved toward less reliable sources of funding (sales tax, income tax, fees, lotteries, etc.). The result has been a fiscal roller coaster and the steady erosion of public services, including education.

But Peter's influence on me went beyond Paradise Lost. Early on at PPIC, I asked Peter what I should read by way of background for my new job. Everything by Carey McWilliams, he said. That was excellent advice, and when I decided to write a book about C-Mac, I asked Peter for more. Those conversations changed the trajectory of my so-called career, since the McWilliams book led to the San Francisco State gig, my involvement with the California Studies Association, and eventually my Ramparts book.

Peter mentions McWilliams in his column today, but someone else should point out the obvious: namely, that Peter has carried on McWilliams's work as the state's shrewdest observer.

The Land of Little Rain

I just turned in a review of a new Mary Austin biography, so it's fitting that I've been hanging out in the desert for the last couple of weeks. As Robert Hass has noted, water is to Mary Austin's 1903 classic, The Land of Little Rain, what marriage is to Jane Austen's novels: the element that explains everything.

Palm Springs Dog Show

My daughters and I attended this event on Saturday. Naturally, the press got wind of our presence there and asked us to comment.