The Zocalo Event

Yep, that's me in a necktie, carrying on. Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation asked me to participate in a discussion about California: specifically, whether it would be better off as a separate country (!) That's Joe on the right, and Abe Lowenthal (far left), David Dayen, and Darry Sragow.

I wasn't sure what my contribution would be, but Joe encouraged me to focus on what Carey McWilliams might have said about that question. Which I did, but as my earlier post indicated, I also added a few comments about the key issue where California has acted like a sovereign state: namely, marijuana use.

As I told the Zocalo people, I really like the way they run their business. They're well organized but keep it fun at the same time--a rare combination.

Paris Review

I was pleased to see Karl Whitney's review of the Ramparts book in 3:AM Magazine, a literary magazine based in Paris. Happily, it also has articles on John Fante, Carey McWilliams's good friend and Charles Bukowski's hero. Check it out, I say.

P.S. Don't be misled by my title. Karl Whitney is based in Dublin.

This Just In

Lots to report since the last post.

I attended the cannabis expo this weekend at the Cow Palace with PoliPointPress author John Geluardi. John is writing a book on medical marijuana (Cannabiz) for PoliPointPress, due out this fall.

If you haven't been following the cannabis saga, you may be missing one of the most important political and business stories of our generation. At the very least, it's the latest example of what Carey McWilliams described as California's peculiar ability to act as "a nation demanding what it had the power to take." Ironically, California was the first state to ban marijuana (in 1913) as well as the first state to re-permit its medical use. And as everyone knows by now, the full legalization of marijuana is on the ballot this November. Even if that measure doesn't pass (this time), many observers think that the cannabis industry is the state's Next Big Thing.

The day before my trip to the Cow Palace, I attended a California studies conference at UC Davis. The California Studies Association, which I chair, was a co-sponsor. This was our first chance to partner with Boom, the new California studies journal published by UC Press, and the New America Foundation. I really enjoyed it, especially the chance to give CSA's Carey McWilliams Award to Peter Schrag. Peter's accomplishments made him a natural recipient, but it meant a lot to me personally because Peter was one of the first people to tell me about the importance of McWilliams and his work. (Former PPIC president David Lyon was another.)

One of the participants at Davis was New America fellow Joe Mathews, who invited me to participate in a Zocalo Public Square event in Los Angeles this week. The topic is "Would California Be Better Off as Its Own Country?" My role, I gather, is to channel Carey McWilliams on California as a nation-state. Should be interesting. I plan to mention medical marijuana as Exhibit A in support of McWilliams's 1949 argument that California demands what it has the power to take.

The Grateful Dead

I guess it was inevitable. I teach a class that focuses on utopian and dystopian representations of California, so how could I avoid the Grateful Dead?

A while back I met David Gans, host of "The Grateful Dead Hour" (syndicated) and "Dead to the World" (KPFA). That started me pondering the band and its story. Since then, I've been reading the books, listening to the CDs, watching the films, visiting the website, and generally immersing myself in that world.

One of the attractions, I think, is the sheer volume of material and its multi-sensory appeal. You can read, watch, and listen forever. When the Grateful Dead archive opens at UC Santa Cruz (scheduled for next year), I may find myself on its doorstep. Maybe people will bring their sleeping bags and line up outside.

Both Ramparts and the Dead emerged from the same Palo Alto-San Francisco axis, so the points of contact are certainly there. But the Grateful Dead saga is an even fuller articulation of the utopian-dystopian aspect of California culture.

If you'd like a little taste of that, check out Festival Express (2004). It's a documentary about a Canadian tour in 1970 that included the Dead, Janis Joplin, and The Band. A private train, the Festival Express, transported them from gig to gig. As the Amazon description puts it, "In five days' time, the festival played in three Canadian cities with the entire conglomeration traveling, playing, and getting smashed together the whole way."

The screen grab above is from one of my favorite scenes. It shows a very wasted Rick Danko, Janis, and Jerry singing "Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos." Given what I've read about Garcia, he probably couldn't have been happier traveling, playing, and partying with other musicians around the clock. Every once in a while they got off the train to do a concert.

New Ramparts Book Review

Elbert Ventura has written a very good review of A Bomb in Every Issue for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. By very good, I don't mean it was (only) positive; I mean I learned something about Ramparts. Very insightful.

For those of you keeping score at home, Ventura is managing editor of the Progressive Policy Institute. Before joining PPI, he was a research fellow at Media Matters for America. The review indicates a fairly detailed knowledge of the lefty organs of the 1960s, but my little Internet search suggests that he's a young man. Here's a brief bio.

Richmond, Ken Alder, and The White Bus

Looks like I'll be moving back to the East Bay soon--Richmond, to be precise, a couple of miles away from where I grew up. Which puts me in mind of a novel by Ken Alder, a friend from elementary school.

Ken is perhaps best known now as a historian of science and the author of The Measure of All Things, which considers the history of the meter. The book inspired a long article in The New Yorker that year.

But well before Ken became a historian, he wrote a young adult novel called The White Bus (1987). Here's the review from Publishers Weekly:

San Francisco's Martin Luther King Jr. High School is a windowless prison attended predominantly by black students. Ira Allen decides to enroll there, along with his black friend Marc. His parents, who expect Ira to attend a prestigious prep school, are infuriated, which seems to be part of Ira's intention. Deriving its title from the nickname the kids at King give Ira's bus (because it transports kids from the overwhelmingly white suburbs), this promising first novel is the story of Ira's first year at King. Predictably, Ira learns a lot about different kinds of "smarts"; falls in love with a black girl; learns to "talk black." Alder's humor and genuine insights save the book from its stereotypical characters, from the doctrine-spouting Marxist "bloods" who regularly shake down their classmates, to the hip English teacher who sleeps with his students. Wavering between an account of a teenage rite de passage and an earnest statement on integration, the narrative displays a lively intensity that helps to compensate for its flaws.

But those who know Ken's history will recognize the autobiographical element. We lived in the El Cerrito hills. Kids from Richmond were bussed to our elementary school; for high school, the hill kids were bussed to John F. Kennedy High School on Cutting Blvd. in Richmond. So don't let the San Francisco setting fool you. It's all about life in the EC--and Richmond.

Berkeley Public Library Foundation Author's Dinner

Yes, they threw ANOTHER house out the window, this time in Berkeley. The Berkeley Public Library Foundation hosted what can only be described as a gala, and I was lucky enough to receive an invitation. The official title was the 8th Annual Authors Dinner, held on Feb. 6.

Attendees included Michael Chabon, Michael Lewis, Novella Carpenter, Mollie Katzen, Joyce Goldstein, Abraham Verghese, Ernest Callenbach, Frances Dinkelspiel, Geoffery Nunberg, and other accomplished authors. Malcolm Margolin received the Pat & Fred Cody award (above). Also in attendance was Mal Burnstein, former attorney for Ramparts and a former board member of the library foundation.

Awesome.

As it turned out, my table was populated by the staff of the Berkeley Patients Group, a medical cannabis collective. We were joined by Berkeley City Council member Darryl Moore.

SF Public Library Event

Man, that was fun for me. Jonathan Hall of the San Francisco Public Library threw the house out the window (as my students in Texas used to say) for the Ramparts event on Jan. 23. Jonathan and his staff put together four posters with Ramparts clippings, covers, and memorabilia--you can see one of them in Michael Sexton's photograph.

Jonathan also made the shrewdest observation of the day, noting that if Ramparts had been a New York magazine, there would have been a Broadway musical about it long ago.

I was gratified to see lots of Ramparts folks at the event, including the Hinckle family (Warren, Denise, Pia, and Hilary) as well as Gretta Mitchell, Steve Keating, Reese Erlich, Jeff Blankfort, Fred Gardner, and Guy Stilson. David Weir and Cherilyn Parsons of the Center for Investigative Reporting were also there, as was PoliPointPress author Lisa Maldonado. Also some family and friends. A nice culmination.

Robert Fulford on Ramparts

This just in: Robert Fulford of the Canadian National Post weighed in on the Ramparts book in this opinion piece. He describes the magazine as "the most exuberant, effective, foolish and hysterical expression of New Left feelings." Further evidence, if any were needed, that the magazine continues to function as a kind of Rorschach test.

More on Sol Stern and Ramparts

Sol Stern's piece on Ramparts was quickly picked up by Ron Radosh at Pajamas Media and David Horowitz's staff at FrontPage. I responded to Radosh's post, Sol replied to my comment, and I answered Sol's.

I can't be sure any minds were changed, but at least I wasn't preaching to the choir. I don't think Ron Radosh had read my book, but Sol's personal experience at Ramparts and familiarity with my account forced me to defend my claims about the magazine and its legacy.

The truth is I'd much rather argue with someone like Sol than rehearse my points with an uninformed sympathizer.