BART, KQED, Bridges and Baseball - Quaking in 1989

A friend invited me to a restaurant in Sausalito recently. Thinking about the drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County brought back many bittersweet memories of wonderful and tragic days in San Francisco's seismic history. 

I used to work at KQED, first in TV programming, then in FM, over several years in the City. Before KQED moved to it's present Potrero Hill location, we used to have our studios and offices near the overpass at 8th and Bryant, South of Market, at the edge of the Tenderloin.

After disembarking from the Larkspur Golden Gate Ferry, our regular MUNI driver crooned soft pop and jazz as we moved South down Market Street through the Financial District from the Ferry Terminal. Regular riders brought him fresh morning coffee from the ferry's refreshment bar and we knew him by name. His voice sounded just like Lou Rawls and it was a great way to travel in the City. 

Every morning I had hot tea, a muffin, and read a newspaper with other City-bound commuters on the ferry. With the breathtaking early morning and late afternoon views, I believed then that I had possibly the best commute of anyone on the planet. That all changed on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m. 

During the opening practice before Game 3 of the 1989 World Series, which was scheduled to begin at 5:35 p.m. (an amazing Bay Area event with both the A's and the Giant's meeting at Candlestick that night), I was under Market Street on BART, heading to the ferry terminal for my ferry ride back to Larkspur. My husband was waiting for me at home in Marin, after cooking us dinner so we could watch the game when I got home. I had ridden MUNI and the Market Street BART line for several years and knew every turn and bump in the route. But that night the BART car did a small side-to-side sway, went up and down suddenly, then we came to a slow stop after leaving the Montgomery Street Station. Next, the emergency lights came on and I saw startled faces in the soft amber glow. It was completely silent, eerie, and all conversations stopped as we sat underground.

I had been reading a newly-published book on the life and death of Chairman Mao. The chapter I had just started was discussing the construction of his mausoleum. I decided not to read that chapter at that particular time, as I did not want to tempt the fates. One woman on my BART car had three small children, did not speak English, and I could tell she was starting to panic. Many of the passengers were trying to get the Series game or news on transistor radios (having brought them to work for the ride home, knowing the series would start early), or to read their papers as if nothing had happened. Yet, when I looked at their faces, I noticed that most were glancing rapidly at the doors and windows of the BART car and not really looking at the open newspapers in front of them. 

Our BART driver announced that he lost communication with anyone outside and had no idea what happened or why we were stopped. He (gratefully) made the decision to evacuate us, since we had only 5 minutes of emergency power remaining before we would be stranded underground in the dark. 

Happy to finally be escaping from the stalled BART cars, we carefully made our way out of the forced-open doors and along the narrow edge of the tracks. We climbed concrete stairs up to a catwalk running along the top edge of the BART tunnel, which had no barrier preventing a sheer slide down to the BART rail far below, if one of us fell or tripped. The stair and catwalk railings were coated with soot. As a result, my hands were covered with black grime as I inched along the narrow escape ledge, one member of a small, silent procession, guided by flashing penlights. (Fortunately, many of the passengers had small key chain flashlights and slide-talk laser pointers.)

I remember walking up the station stairs leading out of the Montgomery Street BART Station and emerging on Market Street. Seeing daylight again was incredibly comforting and such a relief. There were long lines of men and women in the black or navy suits so common in the Financial District, who were trying to make calls home at the overloaded phone kiosks. Others were standing far away from the shattered glass and rubble lining the sidewalks along the buildings, since San Franciscans are well-versed about the likelihood of aftershocks and falling debris from historic brickwork. 

A young man rode a bicycle down Market Street yelling, "The Bay Bridge is down! The Bay Bridge is down!" I was angry, believing he was trying to scare people. I learned later that what he said was partially true. 

One of my KQED Channel 9 co-workers had a neighbor who was killed in the UCSF van which had been caught under the collapsed Cypress structure. The commuter van had exited from the Bay Bridge heading South towards Oakland and Alameda, when the old overpass collapsed crushing the van and its occupants.

Another KQED television co-worker thought she lost her husband on the Bay Bridge when she learned a section of that bridge had collapsed. Likewise, her husband worried that he had lost her in the same bridge failure, since they were both traveling back to the East Bay from San Francisco in separate cars. 

After some harrowing minutes on the shifting bridge, my co-worker was flagged by emergency workers, told to turn around, and motioned to drive back over the West span of the Bay Bridge back to SF in the Eastbound lanes, as the Bay Bridge was shut down by emergency workers. (She and her husband moved out of state within a few months of the Loma Prieta, not wanting to experience another California earthquake.) Similarly, one of our television producers was on the Golden Gate Bridge coming in from Marin, when all of the cars stopped in the middle of the bridge to wait out the shaking and rolling as the Loma Prieta hit.

The Larkspur Golden Gate ferries had to be diverted to a different pier in order to dock and load in San Francisco, since the electric ramps could not be lowered to allow passengers to board. There were planks of plywood balanced between the side of the pier and the ferry, directly over the water.  Passengers hopped across the tilted planks to get on board as ferry workers grabbed their arms to steady them. Passengers threw  $20 bills, entire ferry ticket booklets, and any other cash they had on hand into into large, clean garbage cans held by ferry workers.  As I recall, no one was turned away and many people paid for complete strangers to ferry out of the City that night, if they had no cash with them. 

We could see the Marina District fires burning in the distance when we were about midway across the Bay. The orange smoke reflected on the water created an unearthly glow and the City seemed unreal as the haze of smoke moved East and created an unnatural twilight over the familiar skyline. Many of us were relieved to see that the Golden Gate Bridge had survived, although we learned it was closed for inspection. The Ferry workers gave us updated news over their announcement system, since most on board had no access to news or radio reports. We learned that the Bay Area had just experienced a 7.1 magnitude quake from someone who had a transistor radio sitting near us in the ferry lounge area.

A Goodyear Blimp which had been covering the World Series at Candlestick Park was used to coordinate emergency efforts soon after the quake hit. Since all of the major networks were at Candlestick waiting to cover the World Series game and doing pregame commentary live, the Loma Prieta shaking and aftershocks at Candlestick were caught on camera and documented worldwide. Many broadcasters and reporters were from the East Coast or out-of-state and had never experienced seismic activity in California before.

As I and many others on the crowded ferry motored out of SF, the ferry bar did a booming business. I found some of my Marin neighbors and friends from other non-profits who also worked in the City. People bought each other wine and beer and gathered in small groups, grasping at a new sense of safety from finding those they knew on board. A ferry crew member I recognized told me that they were on the way to Larkspur earlier and thought they had dropped an anchor in the middle of the Bay as the Loma Prieta hit. To be safe, they returned the ferry loaded with passengers to SF, where they learned they could not dock. Fortunately, they devised the plywood plank system, so they were able to load new passengers on board along with the previous passengers, and transport us all out of the City to Larkspur.

There were many people from the East Bay who fled to Larkspur by ferry that night, since they had no other way to get back to Alameda County. I offered to drive one man across the Richmond Bridge back to his home, but he declined, not wanting to cross over any bridges while the aftershocks kept coming. He called his wife, got a cab, and found a hotel in Marin for the night.

I was particularly concerned about my co-workers and those in FM whom I knew would be covering the quake live. At that time KQED was a bit smaller, somewhat informal, and we enjoyed a tightly-knit community at work. 

For many years employees donated Thanksgiving turkeys, money and food to Project Open Hand, and in return they would roast a few turkeys for our staff's Thanksgiving potluck. Since we had many staff members from different cultures, employees brought dishes from their heritage, and it was a really wonderful gathering every year. Managers, administrators, and production personnel all mingled during this annual event, asking about our kids, families and holiday plans.

As I drove home from the Larkspur Ferry Terminal that night, I listened to reports on KQED-FM 88.5, hearing the familiar voices of my colleagues and friends, hoping they remained safe as the aftershocks continued. At home it was reassuring to hear the Channel 9 announcers I worked with every day still making  live announcements from the broadcast logs, as it meant that the station was still intact and the generators were working in our old building.

Many were off work for a few days if their buildings had been hit or power was out. Because I rode the ferry, I was able to work at KQED which had its own generator. However, I rode MUNI up and down Market Street for the rest of my career, no longer willing to get back on BART or to travel underground again.

Bill Graham hosted a series of Earthquake Relief concerts at various venues around the Bay Area. Graham flew Bob Hope to each concert site by helicopter, so he could welcome the large crowds who turned out to raise money and enjoy major name acts like Carlos Santana, Neil Young. Bonnie Raitt, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Pete Escovedo, Bobby McFerrin, Taj Mahal, and Los Lobos.

When one of our KQED staff members asked the then 86-year-old Hope if he was ever planning to visit the troops again, Hope replied, "Son, the only battles I visit at my age are those on the golf course." He joked that he was a survivor of the 1971, 6.6 magnitude San Fernando Valley Earthquake, where he "got up and ran around the house and then the house got up and ran around me."

Earthquake Relief and Bill Graham raised over $2 Million dollars from 22,300 people who attended concerts in Watsonville, Oakland, and San Francisco, as well as donors to the live telethon broadcast on KQED Channel 9. Mayor Willie Brown offered viewers a matching grant of $50,000 from his re-election campaign. The entertainers and their generosity were a catalyst in healing the Bay Area, Santa Cruz, and Watsonville. It was the first time in 35 years that KQED was given a waiver by the FCC to raise money for an entity other than itself, so it could broadcast the Earthquake Relief fundraiser live from 8th and Bryant.

Back in Santa Clara Valley,  St. Joseph's Seminary lost one resident when an historic tower collapsed. 

Around the Bay Area and down the coast to Watsonville, many residents lived and slept outside their homes during the 51 aftershocks which followed over the next 24 hours. Some of the aftershocks were real jolts at 3.0 magnitude. 

Residents had no idea how long aftershocks might continue or how powerful the jolts might be. Every aftershock could further weaken already compromised structures. 

The Loma Prieta epicenter was located in the Forest of Nicene Marks, 2 miles North of Aptos. It had a devastating impact on San Francisco's Marina District, since much of the Northern part of the City had been built on landfill over marshy areas that were once part of San Francisco Bay and subject to soil liquifaction.



Santa Cruz and Watsonville also suffered major downtown damage. The historic brick buildings at the Pacific Garden Mall, a popular gathering area in downtown Santa Cruz, partially collapsed, causing three deaths. 

A Watsonville man died when his car hit horses escaping from a damaged enclosure. 

Other businesses were closed for for clean up and repairs. The quake had a huge impact on the Peninsula and coastal economy, which had been in recovery after a 1980 recession, an oil and energy crisis and double-digit inflation.

In October of 2014 it will have been 25 years since the Loma Prieta Earthquake hit, since the World Series between the A's and the Giants took place at Candlestick, and a very long time since the Earthquake Relief Concerts brought the Peninsula and coastal communities together to rebuild and offer comfort to those who lost family, friends, homes and businesses. In light of all of that, two important questions still remain:

How safe are Bay Area bridges? Are we willing to invest in structural safety?

Unfortunately, reports about continuing funding shortages for needed bridge and infrastructure repairs, plus ongoing discovery of serious Bay Area bridge safety issues, are becoming more urgent and frequent:

• ABC 7 Bay Area Report in May 2013
• KTVU 2 Bay Area Report in May 2013
• NBC 11 Bay Area Report in March 2011

Since 1989, voters missed some opportunities to adopt measures designed to retrofit our Bay Area bridges, voting some measures down during elections due to increased tax costs to homeowners.

Many of our roads and overpasses need seismic and structural updating, however, there is even less funding now than there was back in 1989, due to the mortgage banking products collapse of 2008, which decimated cities and counties. 

Could it be time for a preemptive strike in the form of a second Bay Area Earthquake Relief concert, but this time held long before the next Big One hits for needed infrastructure and safety upgrades and repairs? 

Sadly, Bill Graham and Bob Hope are no longer with us. KQED remains robust and committed, still able to apply for another FCC waiver in the event of a second Bay Area catastrophe. KQED is geared for telethons using their large Mary Bole Hatch production studio, existing phone banks, and talented, experienced staff who already work with the public (and international and local talent) while organizing large, charitable-giving events.

However, we now also have the social media stars of Silicon Valley (Facebook, Google, Apple, and others) who have the capability to develop and fund Bay Area 'Virtual Relief" events immediately, long before (or soon after) the next "Big One" hits. 

The generosity of Bill Graham and the stars of Earthquake Relief in 1989 live on in the high tech boardrooms of Silicon Valley, where many do not remember 1989 and it's devastation of this region, yet know the impact of recent natural tragedies in Oklahoma and on the East Coast, as well as overseas in Japan, Haiti, and in other world regions.

Could we do it differently this time? Raise the needed funds now to improve infrastructure repairs and seismic retrofits for the safety of our communities, schools, and businesses, and as a result, save more Bay Area lives? 

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. 

According to a report by Stanford's Center on Philanthropy and Civic Society, philanthropic giving in Silicon Valley has a "weak philanthropic base" in terms of giving to local communities. Many of the donated funds from valley high tech firms, the Stanford PAC reports, are earmarked for overseas charitable work, not for infrastructure and social programs needed here in Silicon Valley or in the Bay Area.

Stanford's position is refuted by the Wall Street Journal article, "The Tech Moguls That Gave Big in 2012." WSJ reported that SV "moguls" donated stock to local charitable groups in greater amounts than in previous years.

The Foundation Center proposed that high tech donors really feared that a federal charitable deduction benefit would be lost in 2013, which artificially escalated the amount of high tech charitable giving in the Valley towards the end of 2012.

A Forbes article, "How Silicon Valley Profits from Giving Back," talks about our local philanthropy as a result of sharing abundance, rather than seeking future returns. Forbes implies that Silicon Valley donors are more engaged in sharing their success to empower others. Clearly, Silicon Valley is a source of conjecture as a new model of wealth, with a unique, global approach to charitable giving and philanthropy.

Personally, I believe our high tech community is populated with generous people who believe in lifting others up and expanding local safety, since obviously, they live here too. 

Hopefully, our amazing Silicon Valley philanthropists will continue to dig deep for our communities, yet stay off our local bridges, roads and overpasses, until they can successfully lobby our local transportation agencies to have these structures repaired. A major social media and funding campaign to raise awareness and capital, so repairs can be made sooner, rather than later, would be awesome.

Like us, their families, friends and co-workers may be injured or trapped in structures now known to be compromised.


Is infrastructure the job of Silicon Valley? No, not really. However, Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, and many of the other natural disasters had Silicon Valley responding with generosity and compassion.

Perhaps we are in denial about our own elephant in the living room, which is the sad state of our historic and public buildings, schools, bridges, roads, and overpasses, in light of the 63% statistical certainty that the next big earthquake may take place within the next 30 years here in the Bay Area (according to the USGS).

Perhaps we need to stop throwing peanuts at that elephant and lift the seemingly rampant denial about our lack of safety while traveling throughout Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, by doing something meaningful about it now, to significantly lower the number of potential deaths and injuries during the next seismic event.

(Photos courtesy of Wikipedia Commons, KQED, SF GATE, ABAG, Forbes, and the USGS Loma Prieta page.) Many thanks to the Silicon Valley Foundation and other groups who help connect Silicon Valley leaders with those in need from our communities.

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org

Cure for the Shakes: The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition

(1915 PPIE Map courtesy of  the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco)

Santa Clara and Alameda Counties shared an exposition hall at the 1915 PPIE held in San Francisco, near what is now the Marina District. Sadly, an image or more information about the hall and its contents are very hard to locate, but the hall is mentioned in catalogs from the fair, although not in great detail. Television producer, Lee Mendelson, created a lovely video, The Innocent Fair, from 1915 Nitrate films he found in a Tiburon antique store.

In honor of the coming 100th anniversary of the PPIE, I have added some information about the PPIE of 1915 on a new resource Page on this site, since the exposition, it's planning, and it's world-wide advertising from the time the City won the fair location bid in 1911, brought an influx of new visitors and residents to Santa Clara Valley after the devastation of the 1906 Earthquake, which had discouraged investments, building and tourism in this region.

The PPIE celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal and new routes to join the East and West, without the long trip around South America.



The PPIE also demonstrated a new transcontinental telephone line when Alexander Graham Bell made the first bi-coastal telephone call from an exposition hall.

A lighted and sparkling "Tower of Jewels" enthralled exposition visitors and could be seen for miles from the waterfront and on the north end of the City. The "Novagems" from that tower are now a highly sought-after collectors item.

The true value of the PPIE of 1915 to our valley and to the City was demonstrating to the world that we had healed from the fires and devastation of 1906. The PPIE declared that we were once again a safe location for world tourism and investments.

Please see my new PPIE of 1915 resource Page to the right for more information and resources on this remarkable event.
(Small photos courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. Alexander Graham Bell photo courtesy of ATT.)

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org

Remembering Internment in the Bay Area

Last May marked the 70th anniversary of one of the more troubling periods of our local history.

The U.S. Army Civilian Exclusion Order No. 96, on May 24th and May 25th, 1942, required all Santa Clara County citizens in (West Coast) Military Area #1 of Japanese ancestry to report to the Civil Control Station Assembly Area, also known as the Men's Gymnasium, San Jose State College, located at 4th and San Carlos Streets in San Jose, California. 

Tagged for Evacuation, Salinas California
Wikipedia/LOC Russell Lee

The exclusion order appeared on May 23, 1942, from the Presidio of San Francisco, following similar public proclamations made on March 2, 1942.

 U.S. General John L. DeWitt created two military zones on the West Coast and required Japanese living in those zones to report all changes in residence within five days.

On March 18, 1942 Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority.

There were some U.S. government films made to justify these actions in 1943, all written and produced by the Office of War Information, Bureau of Motion Pictures.

All of the proclamations resulted from Roosevelt's Executive Order #9066, published on February 19, 1942, ordering the evacuation to inland resettlement areas of all West Coast residents perceived as a threat to national security. 

Documents and photographs online:
All of these documents can be read online at the National Archives Records of the War Relocation Authority (WRA). The FBI Vault also has historic Custodial Detention documents online, which show records, memos, and other documents on the arrest of persons by nationality and geographic location, starting as early as 1939. Italian Americans, German Americans, and other Americans of certain European nationalities were tracked as well.

The Online Archive of California has a profound group of photographs illustrating the bleak conditions of the Japanese in federal relocation camps during this era, some of which are available online.

Other counties in California posted similar exclusion orders as the army prepared to move and house thousands of Japanese residents and nationals, believing some were spies or in league with submariners off the California, Oregon, and Washington coasts. A sentiment of national suspicion by some towards the Japanese had been heightened after Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, which lead the U.S. Congress to declare war on Japan the following day.

Japanese-owned Grocery, March 1942
Wikipedia/LOC

To comply with relocation orders, Japanese residents lost their jobs, their homes, and their businesses, reclaiming only pennies on the dollar, if anything, for houses, cars, and possessions, in order to evacuate to Federal assembly centers by the mandated deadlines. 

Japanese families were held in these assembly areas (like the Men's Gym at San Jose State College) under extraordinarily poor and crowded conditions, before being placed on crowded buses and trains to one of two WRA Relocation Centers on the West Coast, Manzanar or Tule Lake, with a third Isolation Center for those who were perceived to be at more high risk to national security, located near Manzanar.

Along the Peninsula, Japanese families assembled and were housed in horse stalls at Tanforan Race Track, although some of the stalls had not been fully cleaned out. In some cases there were no doors on the latrines or restrooms, and women who were considered high risk had to change clothing in front of male guards, to make sure nothing was being hidden. On the train and bus journeys from the local assembly centers to the final California resettlement camps, women and men sometimes had to use open fields with family members holding up blankets and coats for privacy, as there were no restrooms at stops. Evacuees and conditions at Tanforan were photographed by Dorothea Lange for the WRA in 1942.

Survivors tell their stories Online:
There are some local accounts of Internment experiences online, including some accounts by well-known celebrities living South of the Bay Area at the time of evacuation.

The actor Pat Morita talks about being held in a Japanese Internment Camp, during a video posted on YouTube.

A former internee visits the San Jose Japanese Internment Memorial with a group of San Jose State University Journalism students, in a video posted on YouTube.

Mas Hashimoto, who lectured regularly to local school groups and organizations about his Internment experience as a resident of Watsonville, is featured in a Gavilan College TV program.

George Takei eloquently describes his childhood experiences during the Internment, as well as conditions during the war and at the camps, in a series of videos posted on YouTube.

Local Resources:

The Japanese American Interment Memorial is located at 300  S. 1st. Street (The Federal Building) in San Jose. 

The Japanese American Museum of San Jose has a remarkable exhibit on the Internment at 535 North 5th Street in San Jose, with some material online.

Books and Media:

Materials on the Japanese American Relocation and Internment can be found online at WorldCat:

Japanese Internment Nonfiction and Historical Books for Adults  

Japanese Internment Fiction for Adults.

Japanese Internment Books for Children, both Nonfiction and Fiction.

Reflections:

Legislated discrimination against one group of people, for whatever reason, diminishes every other ethnic, gender-based and socioeconomic group, as the legislation itself places a government stamp of approval on laws and policies which codify prejudice as an appropriate act, in forming public policy for diverse groups of residents.

If it is acceptable for some not to have full constitutional rights, for whatever reason, then none really have a guarantee of full rights, either now or in the future, no matter what their race, gender, education, status, or ethnicity may be. By codifying separate constitutional rights among groups found within a nation, all residents become vulnerable as potential targets of the next legislative group to come along, who may very well believe that those who are safe today, are tomorrow's new enemies.

History truly offers many lessons.

(All photo images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.)

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org

Digging Silicon Valley - Resources for Gardeners

There are certain benefits to growing up in a 1950's agricultural wonderland, like exploring a backyard oasis filled with bugs, birds, and critters, as well as an odd collection of home grown fruits and vegetables. In my youth this was capped off with the annual crop of alien-sized, monster Zucchini, which rivaled anything found in Roswell. 

Please raise your hand if you are over fifty and ate part of at least one overgrown, stuffed zucchini for weekly dinners during the summer months? Yep, I knew it. The parents always made it seem as if we were getting a delicacy. Right. Raise your hand if your family tried to give away old zucchini from their gardens hidden under tender, sweeter, and smaller squash? Yep, you are one of us.

There were beautiful butterflies and large, furry moths in this valley, along with amazing caterpillars, grasshoppers, huge bees, and assorted beetles. Much of the "old" West Valley flora and fauna can be seen at McClellan Ranch Preserve, which is worth a quiet afternoon of exploration.
When my fifth grade teacher told us to place an ammonia-dipped cotton ball in a sealed jar and catch and kill bugs for a homework assignment, my dear mother sent that teacher a note the next day stating, "We don't kill living things that aren't bothering us at our house." Right on, Mom.

This love of living things, and a few years of watching gardening shows on KQED, led to a kind of rescue mentality in my life. Dying house plant, small tree, bush, or veggie plant for sale? They all came home with me. I had a Mammillaria Lanata "nipple" cactus which I bought for $.49 at the local market because it was completely dehydrated and about to roll out of its miserable pot. I had that cactus for 36 years until my house-sitting friend left it outside during a freeze, when I was out of town. By that time it weighed about 15 lbs and had rings of bright pink flowers every summer. Rest in peace, my friend.

I have included photos of some of my "rescue" plants here. A saved Hydrangea from the large, local home improvement center, was planted last summer. A salvaged Pink Supreme Rose was purchased from an unnamed nursery, where it was left with no water and in sad shape. My biggest victory, however, is a rescued Early Elberta peach, which had lost all of its leaves and was literally gasping (at least in my mind), when I saw it the local home improvement store last fall. It came home with me and was planted, fertilized, and loved. Here is my wonderful peach tree today:

I have also inherited an old nectarine tree which looks like it's dying every winter. If you've seen Snow White and the Huntsman, you might remember the barren, gnarled trees in the evil forest. Well, my old nectarine tree looks like a distant relation to Snow's worst arboreal nightmare. So, I thought, I'm going to give that old tree some love (and some fruit spikes.) Here is my old friend in all of her fruit-laden, summer glory today:

And the fruit is large, beautiful, and healthy, so much so that I had to thin out the young buds this spring, yet still have such a large crop that I lost some branches due to the sheer weight of all of the fruit.

For fruit trees which produce abundant fruit, call Village Harvest, a nonprofit volunteer organization which organizes teams to pick fruit and distribute it to the hungry, through several county organizations and food banks.

My newest garden residents are a Bearss Seedless Lime and an Improved Meyer Lemon, both rescued from a local hardware/nursery store and ready for some TLC. I will post pictures as they recover.

If you are interested in learning more about heirloom fruit, vines, roses, and any type of gardening, try some of these local and regional resources:

• Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County: http://mastergardeners.org/scc.html
• The Santa Clara County Chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers:  http://www.crfg.org/local/chapters/ca_scv.html
• The Santa Clara County Rose Society:  http://sccrose.org/
• The Cactus and Succulent Society of San Jose:  http://www.csssj.org/
• The Allied Grape Growers of California:  http://www.alliedgrapegrowers.org/links.html
• The Heritage Roses Groups (Click on "Links"):  http://www.theheritagerosesgroup.org/
• Old Time Farm and Garden (Radio) Show:  http://www.mastergardeners.org/events/kkup.html
• Silicon Valley Health Corps Community Gardens:  http://www.healthtrust.org/svhealthcorps/
• The California Native Plant Society:  http://www.cnps-scv.org/

There are lots of great books on gardening at your library, which can be found using WorldCat, which collects every library book, audio recording, thesis, map, etc., all in one large database online. Here are just a few suggestions from that database. Try your own search to find more books, articles, and e-books on WorldCat.

• Books for kids
• Books on heirloom roses
• Books on growing vegetables and fruits
• Audio Books on gardening, including some biographies

Happy Gardening! (And happy reading!)

(Update: Sadly, all of my fruit trees all had to come out, due to vector control issues in my area. Evidently I was too successful and I was getting too many critters. I miss my trees. At least they were well loved while I had them.)

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org

Write Roots - Online Genealogy & Memoir Resources

Today I read that Ancestry Library Edition, the public library subscription version of Ancestry.com by Proquest, is one of the most widely utilized electronic subscription databases for genealogy in our Silicon Valley public libraries.

With the popularity of scrap booking, Census, and family tree-maker sites and software, plus the expansion of local historical society resources and projects as Baby Boomers age, I suspect that our generation will play a major role in documenting and recording the lineage and memories of our first, second, and third-generation relatives. In doing so, we will create a tangible record of our own rites of passage, as "memoir" scribes of our generation.

In writing about memoir, especially within the constraints of history, first learning the historical record and details of one’s heritage (even when the opportunity for gathering oral histories may no longer be available), may provide a valuable breadcrumb trail through creative options of how best to organize your writing.

In my own family our cherished family oral historical beliefs were discovered to be a bit scrambled. Of course, the online heraldry sites said we come from royalty, that we were from another nationality altogether, and that we had a family crest. Well, it sounds like fun, but I think we are a lot like every other family, only special because we love each other, not because we are related to knights, kings or queens.

In reality, generations of the maternal side of my family fished along the rocky Adriatic coast, when they weren't growing grapes or making wine. Some were from generations of educated folk whose heritage was linked to regions which were home to the ancient Celts. The paternal side of my family is Northern European, and not much is known about them as borders and records changed or were lost during war times. But there was another stunning revelation.

When a distant cousin researched our family records, she found that much of what we thought we knew, which had been handed down through our family's oral and written histories, was wrong.

In trying to remember the past, our family's elderly first generation had some dates and places confused, and there was a secret first (or second wife) attached to our great grandfather, depending whose side of the family was telling the story.

Instead of clinging to what we wanted to believe about our past, we received the gift of our real heritage and history. It was wonderful and all courtesy of records which my cousin found through online record searches, a historical path of detection which you can follow yourself or with the help of a librarian and a local genealogy center.

Aside from taking you deeper into your personal or family journey, genealogy and history sites will ground you in the authentic events which shaped your historic past, the silent backdrop which sets the atmosphere and tone of your memoir.

The following works illustrate several methods of writing an historic memoir: • Placing your family memoir within an historical perspective and framing it as an allegory of the times, offers readers a broader view of your personal story within regional or worldwide events of significance. Greg Mortenson’s books, Three Cups of Tea (2009) and Stones into Schools (2010) integrate one man’s journey from failed, scruffy mountain climber to respected international humanitarian, all within the framework of cultural and political events in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• Likewise, taking a much-documented political or international event and telling the story of its personal impact on you, or the lives of a handful of people you knew well, personalizes history and brings it vividly alive for the reader. The ongoing popularity of era-based oral histories by Studs Terkel, some even contemporized in graphic novel format illustrates the multigenerational appeal of presenting real people who survived and thrived during typically summarized major local or world events, clustering a common major cultural memoir into vignettes, with one individual, one story at a time.

• A more recent work, Angel Island: immigrant gateway to America, by Erika Lee and Judy Yung (2010) employs oral histories, holding-cell drawings, and government records to tell the story of Pacific immigrants who were endlessly becalmed on this San Francisco Bay gateway island while attempting to gain entry into the United States. Both Lee and Yung are descended from Angel Island detainees, which lend certain pathos to their memoir.

• Contemporary biography may also highlight an era, a personal transformation, or handle difficult subjects and memories within an historic perspective. Keith Richard’s new biography, Life, Keith Richards (2010) has received positive reviews for its surprising poignancy as Richards reveals aspects of his childhood and adolescent years which are markedly different from the hard-driving, drug-saturated public persona which unfolded across the tabloids in his role as a founding member of the Rolling Stones. Transformational stories like these, framed by a specific era and its music, fashion, and world events, enrich the ability of readers to relate to the subject of the memoir. Even those readers who are unaware of Richards, per se, may relate to a story of self-annealing honesty.

Writing memoir from these perspectives closely follows aspects of Journalism, with its requirement for factual and accurate reporting of documented events. A subset of journalism which includes chronological reporting on authentic events, coupled with personal impressions and view points, has been termed, Narrative Journalism or “Creative Nonfiction.” One of my favorite introductions to this marriage of Journalism and memoir is Telling True Stories: A nonfiction writers’ guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. In this work noted nonfiction writers like Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, Susan Orlean and others, share their insights on the meaning and craft of narrative journalism.

To increase your breadth of historical knowledge while writing memoir, these online sites are particularly helpful:

• The Ellis Island Foundation • The American Memory Collection
• The U.S. Census Online
• The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration U.S. Census page and related genealogy pages featuring passenger ship manifests, immigration records, and military service records, among other resources.
• LDS Family History Centers - Family Search
• University of Houston’s Digital History site
• American Cultural History: The Twentieth Century (by decade)
• Ancestry Library Edition is available for free at some local libraries and can be accessed online with your library card.

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org

Kerr Jars - A Silicon Valley Holiday Memoir

The peeling, creaky ladder went over, spilling at least half a bucket of juicy, Burgundy-colored Royal Ann cherries, most of them tumbling in a sorry heap in the dirt at my feet.

It was 102 in the shade at 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and if I weren't trying to keep pace with my buff, older male cousins, I would have cried some deeply female pre-adolescent tears. I was dirty, sweaty, shy, and tired, and I had two more miserable hours among the cicadas, bees, and fruit flies, before cooling relief, in the form of the Meyer lemonade and liverwurst sandwiches which were waiting in my mother's linoleum-patterned kitchen.

Pears soap. A long shower. My faithful Woodhue Cologne. My pink bedroom with it's white lace pillows, collection of special rocks, and dog-eared Agatha Christie novels, one bookmarked and waiting. I would disappear from the jovial warmth of family to find my quiet indoor oasis, although our house had only one bathroom and our entire, gregarious family had descended for the cherry harvest.

We grew Blenheim and Moorpark apricots, along with Royal Ann and Bing cherries, cots which my aunts, cousins, and I would cut faithfully every summer, then dry. Our French Prune crop would be picked and sent to dry yards, then packaged by a local family conglomerate who would make their fortune selling dried produce internationally.

During summer the valley air would smell like a candy store of ripe fruit, sticky with juice and sugar, at least until the peaches were harvested and the canneries would leave the skins to sour and decay in large, steaming piles. All of these visions, scents, and memories live on in my mother's fruit-filled Kerr jars, still tucked away on a shelf, cool and dark, waiting to restore me back to another time, rich with family, the scent of summer, and bounty in the life that was astonishingly simple compared to today.

Our family's European heritage would translate into a holiday gifts of our dried fruits to the postman, to our neighbors, doctors, dentist, tax accountant, and to out-of-state relatives and friends. We would stuff our dried prunes with chopped walnuts or whole roasted almonds, then dip them in dark chocolate, lining up the warm nuggets in dripping rows on old, bent cooling racks. My aunt and uncle, who had an apple orchard in the Wine County, before they converted it to grape varietals, would give us boxes of their spicy, sweet Gravenstein apples, more intensely delicious than any other apple I have tasted since. From this we made our own applesauce, cider, and apple cake, staples on our holiday tables.

I have no idea how my parents managed to produce a large tomato crop every year, since my plants seem to disappear from the valley's clay-hard soil, roots and all, long before they have a chance to produce. From their large crops of tomatoes, bell peppers, and herbs, my mother made her own canned, stewed tomatoes, which appeared in some form at every evening meal, cherry-red, gently tart, and carrot-sweet.

I have a deep, new respect for my father, now that I am tending his garden and caring for the family home. I earned my own advanced academic degree to escape the farming life and work as a public librarian, although I now long to recreate the simplicity and abundance of my agricultural memory, while relishing visits to my cousins and their wine and vineyard-related businesses in Napa and Sonoma counties.My father was a wonderful cook, an accomplished dirt gardener, a skilled carpenter who erected redwood patios, decks, a workshop, and other outbuildings. 

He was also a dedicated home journeyman who wrestled skillfully with his own electrical and plumbing work, all while working dawn to dusk as a butcher. I never remember him once being home sick in his 40 years of employment. I wish I had his strength, knowledge, and skill, as I slowly restore the old family home and gardens, now surrounded by Hewlett Packard and Apple Computer, in what has become one artery within the heart of California's Silicon Valley. The picture I have included shows him with three of my six California cousins. He bought them all cowboy outfits around this time, in the late 1940's.

It was a European tradition in our family to have a kettle of Cioppino on Christmas Eve. Everyone would gather and contribute some portion of the fish, Polenta, Ciabatta, or produce. The lace tablecloths would come out, wine glasses would appear, and a tray of relishes and French onion and clam dips would be set out in crystal bowls. As a special treat we would carefully boil ravioli's, either home made or from La Villa Deli in Willow Glen, and have their Cucciddata cookies for dessert, which was a special treat. For summer holidays we would have large bouquets of gorgeous chrysanthemums from our neighbor's hothouses, at least in the early years, before they moved to farm their acres of blooms in the Fresno area.

During holiday meals my father would have a few glasses of red wine and talk wistfully of his Navy days in Guiuan (Eastern Samar) in the Philippines. He was in charge of the vegetable garden near his Quonset hut (and of censoring mail), and would send my mother long letters about his produce, including photos of himself holding boxes of his vegetables and flowers while wearing native dress. He was a kind-hearted and fun-loving man who would find the horrors of war heartbreakingly unbearable. His Navy garden gave him solace, plus my mother's agricultural family, with it's seasonal rituals and strong ties, would strengthen and ground him with wonderful meals filled with fresh produce, among a family who thrived on European traditions and cookery in all its forms.

As I run an old broom down the stacks of my mother's fruit-filled Kerr canning jar cases, I remember the beautiful molasses-colored eyes of one horse, it's large ivory teeth reaching over an old, white-washed corral, to grasp and crunch my offerings of late-summer carrots and apples. My mother and I regularly passed the same horse ranch as we walked down our rural, country lane to "Joe the Egg Man's house," as we called it then, where we would watch Joe candle each egg lovingly, before gently placing it in the cartons which we saved between visits. It's hard to believe that these early years existed in Silicon Valley, now home to a highly educated, high-tech international brain trust, a renowned center of venture capitalism, several world class universities, an astonishingly successful hub of ethnic diversity, and a thriving cultural explosion of opportunities. Back then, it was a dusty, verdant river valley, lush with produce and hard-working first and second generation Asian, Latin, and European families.

Today my mother and father are long gone and the orchard has been subdivided, yet I still have a shed filled with my mother's home-canned apricots, peaches, and cherries from 40-50 years ago. They are no longer safe to eat and some day I will have to dispose of them, but they carry the life-blood of so many family summers in their sealed, sweet chambers, that the time to finally let go of their Dandelion Wine-like magic may not exist in my lifetime.

Recipes (Click images to enlarge)

Brandied Cherries

I was surprised to find several large jars of brandied Royal Ann cherries in my mother's closet after she passed away. 

I have included her recipe for this treat, which is luscious over ice cream or cheesecake. My grandfather made his own wine, whiskey, and brandy when he had a ranch in Cupertino near the current site of the county library and Cupertino City Hall. He used goats to keep the weeds down in the orchard, but that's a story for another time.



Sherry Prune Cake

If you have not tried Prune Cake or Prune Muffins, they are naturally sweet, incredibly moist, and delicious with spicy goodness. I like to add some walnuts to my muffins, and usually leave out the egg yolks and reducing the sugar in my mother's original recipe. I also replace the milk with buttermilk.

My mother's recipe for Sherry Prune Cake is shown in her handwriting, however, her recipe seems to have a few missing steps or ingredients and has never turned out very well for me. Baking temperature is 325 degrees or 300 degrees for glass pans (not shown on the recipe card).

Make sure to oil the pan well and line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, as her prune cake has a tendency to stick to the baking pan. Baking times will vary based on the moisture in the prunes (watch the browning of this cake and test with a toothpick to determine that adequate baking time has taken place.) For all of these reasons, using a Bundt or tube pan is not recommended.

To find books with holiday recipes, California Farm life records, and holiday memoirs (on WorldCat.org):

• California Farm Life - Find it for me
• California Holidays and History - Find it for me
• California Farm Recipes - Find it for me
• Cioppino and Italian History in the Bay Area (Cioppino was created in San Francisco)- Find it for me
• Cioppino Recipes - Find it for me on Google
• Canning and Cookery History in the United States - Find it for me
• Canning and Preserving Recipes - Find it for me
• Cupertino Historical Society and Museum - Find it for me

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org

Don't think of Oranges - Memoir Resources for Writers

It took years for me to actually trust myself enough to write, solely for the joy of writing.

Like many women, I felt compelled to write cogently and authoritatively when I had an issue or position to present for a practical purpose. However, writing about my own history, about my family memories, and about the many activities within my region of the country, felt less like an authentic life pursuit because, well, it was "fun."

In my upbringing and within my family of origin, "fun" was considered to be highly suspicious stuff. It implied that not enough of the real, "important" work might be getting done, like picking fruit, canning, sewing, learning the Catechism and declension of Latin nouns, and writing those ubiquitous, weekly thank-you notes we penned so often in the 1950's and 1960's. "Thank you for your thank-note. I really enjoyed it."


In the 50's and 60's "fun" meant that you were somehow getting into something that might have to be mentioned in Confession. The parents weren't sure what your quiet, soul-cleansing revelation might be on Saturday morning, but they knew it would be a negative reflection on their parenting, one way or another. Our parents worked hard, they were honest, and even they weren't happy all the time, so how could their kids possibly expect to be happy without some misguided wrongdoing involved?

Good, hard, sober work was highly valued on my mother's side of the family. "Work" consisted of those activities which, a) garnered a stable income but not so much cash that anyone else in the family might become too jealous or resentful, b) kept a boss consistently in focus because their opinion mattered much more than yours ever would, could, or should, c) led to regular promotions [for caveat, see "a"], and, d) gave one's parents bragging rights over the success of their child within the loamy family ecosystem, rife with the sprouting eyes of their own past successes and failures. 

Education was also valued, but only if it lead to a, b, c, and d. Too much education was considered excessive and self-promoting, especially for the women of the family. It distracted from time which could be spent, you guessed it, at work.

I should say that a counterpart to "d" above, was a certain Greek chorus of woe and heightened phone activity when I or my cousins experienced challenges within our work or personal lives. We were all responsible, we paid our bills on time, contributed to charity, volunteered selflessly, but our parents remained concerned and vigilant lest too much happiness lead us astray. 

"Why do you want to go to graduate school? Don't you have enough education already?" "Can you afford a vacation?" "Where is he taking you? What does he do for a living? He does what?" (All said with the look.)

I remember one widely-reported incident regarding the health of one of my cousin's, well, how should I say this, "private parts." This was a second-generation subject of morbid controversy for at least three weeks running, no matter how much my poor cousin tried to quell the topic among our aunts. I would rather not have known anything about it, or them. (Don't think about oranges. Please don't even talk about oranges. I don't even want to know you have oranges.) When I had a biopsy in later years my family never knew about it. I took a good friend and we found copious ice cream varieties afterward. No oranges were harmed in the making of my personal drama. I would like to thank the Academy.

So, we learned early not to report the truth when our lives were a bit shaky or bumpy. We were always winners. We always succeeded. We never told our parents the real truth of our lives, because it would explode exponentially beyond our control, like a an exquisitely hand-tied fly, cast high over a broad, fast-running stream. One which we knew we could never reel in and recast, for it would be forever lost among the reeds on a swift current moving ever forward, until summer's heat and a new year left it tattered and scorched, waiting to be rediscovered and reexamined. In our family, secrets and sore spots never died, they were reconstituted like enhanced gravy at each holiday meal and appeared nearly as often.


Our mothers and aunts were born into a family where a married woman did not have hobbies, which were considered to be too unproductive. Hence, whatever foolishness we had gotten into (or out of) each week became our parents' version of living reality TV. Tune in, take an aspirin, call your sister, and talk about the worst case scenario. My cousins and I were the Cuban Missile Crisis, Med Fly, Whip 'n Chill, "Duck, cover, and HOLD," "Can't get no satisfaction," generation. We chewed on sugar-stiffened doilies, we melted red licorice in the steam of our mentholated vaporizers, and we beat our parents at Gin Rummy but had to do the dishes anyway.

Our parents were more cautious, coming from a generation which had tasted wild abandon in the rhythmic flavors of Scat, Swing, and Jive, yet had it all suddenly yanked out of their grasp by the advent of war. They could remember a long, arduous climb out of the Great Depression with much deserved pride, so WWII was a secondary shock to their sense of trust in stability. Swing music, unfortunately, was now a pulsing reminder of the War years.

We loved them, we respected them, and we clashed. We tried to convince them that being happy had inherrent value. We no longer believed that if we collected enough psychic Green Stamps that some day, long in the future, we could finally redeem our filled, sticky books for that elusive free gift, happiness.

We watched the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK Jr., and John Lennon. We watched Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to love the Bomb, and tried to forget the Cold War, despite the constant drone of late-night flights into Moffett Field. We wanted some happy right now, because our future was not guaranteed, according to the lingering fears of The Greatest Generation. We wanted just enough happy to know that we were really alive today. Touch wood.

If we could, just for a few moments, feel the warmth of the sun on our Yardley-washed faces, feel it's heat though our tie-dyed t-shirts, and know that blissful release from winter's cold down to our Birkenstocked toes, we could leave this fragile life with not just a material legacy, fulfulling the dream of our parents, but with a life dream, a memory of having reached inside for a creative joy that grew out of our own intrinsic sense of value. We could finally be at peace.

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Here are some books which have led me back to the joy of writing and a creative mindset, when I have, at times, temporarily abandoned a lifestyle which included my art. (Titles of these books are linked to WorldCat, which will allow you to enter your zip code and find them in a library near you. WorldCat also finds these books for you on Amazon and other online book retailers, if available.)

• For those of you who, like me, seem to get sidelined away from writing (or your own particular art form), I have found Julia Cameron's How to Avoid Making Art (or anything else you Enjoy) (Penguin 2005) to be a great kick-start back into living your writing dream and eliminating self-imposed distractions. Cameron uses simple, humorous, line drawings to illustrate concepts particularly appropriate for women who get too involved in others lives and find themselves with no time left for their own creative journey.
  


• For women who tend to want to wait to write or live fully until they have achieved some inner laundry list of perfection, Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth (Scribner 2010) is a revelation of wisdom about coming to a place of wholeness, so your life may actually begin right now. If you are waiting until you lose 20 pounds, get your garage cleaned out, put your kids though college, or finally have your remodel done before you live your dream, this book is for you.


• Sometimes changing focus from a busy life to a writing life can present challenges. We can't tell our children, our jobs, or our elderly parents to stop having needs or crises so we can have time to write. If you need help finding your writing voice within a chaotic life, Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend from Far Away: The practice of writing Memoir (Simon and Schuster, 2007) has pages of prompts which can give unfocused and distracted writing a starting point. Her suggested exercises and themes are also helpful for blocked writers.


• Lastly, and I say this truly in all seriousness, we all need a life-memoir tiara. Not a Burt Parks, Miss America type of thing, but a self-made crown which reminds us of the best of who we are and how far we have come on our writing or life journey. Build yourself a circular ode to your spirit, whether in chicken wire, pipe cleaners and old earrings, or an embellished, aluminum pie plate covered with old magazine photos, glitter, and old buttons. Let it remind you that you have a creative, inner life and a writing spirit which needs tending. For home crafted tiara ideas, I like Crowns and Tiaras: Add a little sparkle, glitter, and glamour to every Day (Sterling Publishing, 2007), by Kerri Judd and Danyel Montecinos. Wear it with pride.

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There are a wealth of classes and events available for writers of memoir and creative nonfiction in Silicon Valley. Here are some well-established resources:

• Stanford Continuing Education offers classroom instruction through The Writers Studio, plus online writing instruction through The Online Writers Studio. Both sites list courses in memoir and other genre, including creative nonfiction. Stanford Continuing Studies also offers public events featuring notable writers. On November 18, 2010 the Speak, Memory series begins with readings from works by Jorge Luis Borges, Oliver Sachs, and Anne Tyler.


• The Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University has presented some outstanding programs with notable authors. In 2011 E. L. Doctorow will be featured in a booksigning on March 23rd, followed by an onstage interview on March 24th, as part of the 2011 Martha Heasley Cox Lecture series.

---Catherine Alexander Bright, SiliconValleyLibrarian.org