Tag: California

‘Fruits of Eden’ by Patricia Damery

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

I have mourned the overdevelopment in California (the state where I was born) and the overdevelopment in Florida (the state where I grew up). In both cases, environmentally diverse and beautiful states have been ruined and badly compromised for the sake of tourism and development that left no stone unturned in raping the best areas first. The late Atlanta historian, Franklin Garrett, called this approach to land use within a city “municipal vandalism.” Insofar as California and Florida are concerned, I call it near-criminal destruction of the land.  Years ago, a minister said the real Garden of Eden was in west Florida. If that had proven true, it would have been paved over by now.

So I warn you, I supported this book before I even saw it.

I must also confess that I have known Patricia Damery online for years and enthusiastically reviewed her earlier books. This book comes from the front lines of climate change and bad land-use practices. So, I can’t help but show it to you in spite of my prospective biases. By the way, you can see an interview with Pat here. The book comes in two editions, one with the interior photographs in color, and the other in black and white.

From the Publisher

Damery – Napa Valley Register Photo

In Fruits of Eden, author Patricia Damery takes readers on a thirty-year journey, vividly recounting her citizen activism to protect the world-famous Napa Valley from the ravages of over-development, water plundering, government failures, greed, and damaging tourism.

Damery’s articulate and Illustrative voice is a powerful call that interweaves the story of her ranch with her history, reflections, marriage, and her husband’s onset of dementia. His Alzheimer’s began at the same time as pressure on the ranch’s sustainability became acute. Conversely, there is also great hope. The author’s relationships with colleagues in action for the valley, her children, her grandchildren and friends all share a deep love for this extraordinary place on the planet.

Over the decades Damery and her husband, Donald Harms, developed a way of life that respected the natural ecology of their land in the Napa Valley. They applied organic and biodynamic methods, left large parts in their natural state, and had a herd of goats that lived next to Patricia’s writing studio. Then climate change coupled with egregious overdevelopment overcame them, threatening to destroy their way of life. Destruction of native oaks caused erosion and groundwater depletion, insecticide use disrupted the balance of animal life, including beneficial insects, population density and tourism

–

I visited Napa Valley multiple times before the nefarious amongst us began turning it into hell. I don’t want to go back there again any more than I want to see again what the fools who created Daytona Beach have done to the once-precious land along the Atlantic coast. But with the help of books like Fruits of Eden and their from-the-trenches authors, maybe we can save some of the endangered Edens that remain.

—Malcolm

 

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

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Frequently asked questions

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Malcolm R. Campbell

All the class websites have a FAQ section. I seldom look at these because I don’t have any questions and/or suspect the page will be a marketing ploy. So this post is for the bold, those willing to go where no one has gone before.

  • Since you write magical realism, do you really believe in magic?
  • Yes. In fact, I think that magic is often more true than realism.
  • Did you always want to be a writer?
  • Goodness no. I wanted to be a locomotive engineer, a national parks ranger, or a Jungian psychologist. However, I was tricked by the dark side into taking radio-TV writing and production, and journalism courses during the days when a liberal arts education could supposedly get you a job anywhere. It couldn’t.
  • Is it true that you went into the gigolo business?
  • On the advice of my attorney, I cannot answer that question other than to say “what do you think?”
  • If you had a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, what would you choose?
  • The sea, always. I grew up on the Florida coast, so water is nearly sacred to me. I’ve crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by ship and am happy to say neither voyage was made on a so-called cruise ship, a ship that seems more like a floating Disney World than a way of experiencing the sea.
  • I read somewhere that you were brought up by alligators in the Everglades.
  • That was wishful thinking that might not have been true.
  • You were born in California, right?
  • In Berkeley, the center of rebellion against the establishment. However, my Facebook page says I’m from Florida partly because I am and partly because I think California has become everything we fought against at Berkeley. I left my heart in San Francisco, but I’m not going back for it.
  • Who are your favorite authors?
  • James Joyce, Michael Shaara, and Pat Conroy. Yes, I know they don’t exactly have a lot in common. Well, other than me.
  • Where do you stand politically?
  • My attorney, John Beresford Tipton, doesn’t want me to answer that question because such answers often lead to name-calling and threats rather than dialogue. I will say this: we have way too much government.
  • How in the hell do you work on such a cluttered desk?
  • Creativity comes from chaos. Actually, I think it’s important to create chaos rather than order.
  • Are you really a Scot?
  • According to my genealogy, very much so. But no, I wasn’t born there, not in this lifetime. I do favor all things Scottish over anything English. Queen Elizabeth I kidnapped and murdered our queen, Mary Queen of Scots, so I have little positive to say about England and its monarchy.  Plus, the English can’t cook.
  • Are you a dog person or a cat person?
  • A cat person. It’s my wife’s fault. We’ve probably “adopted” a hundred cats since we got married. Okay, maybe ten cats.
  • Are you happen being a writer?
  • Yes and no. Unless you’re James Patterson, it’s more of a hobby than a profession.

–Malcolm

I left my heart in San Francisco

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn San Francisco, writing

Mission Dolores Park with city in the backgroundMy family lived in the San Francisco Bay area when I was born. I saw them later on visits while in elementary school and later as an adult. Two perspectives: family and city attractions through a child’s eyes and man’s eyes.

I father’s sister Vera lived up the hill from Mission Delores Park for most of her life, communting to and from work on the J Church Street car that ran along the park’s edge.  When I was in the navy, I lived in an apartment next to Mission Dolores Park a short walk from Vera’s apartment. When I wasn’t using my car, I also commuted in and out of town on that J Church train in Dolores Park, May 2018.JPGsame old street car to the terminal where I mad connections for a bus ride across the Bay Bridge to Alameda where my ship was in port. That Naval Station is no longer there.

When I was a child, the family often visited my great Aunt Claire in a nursing home in the 1950s. She was still living in that same nursing home in 1968–all those years: hard to imagine. When I saw her in 1968, she was sharp and alert and spoke one minute about going across country in a covered wagon when the family moved west from Iowa and then about the policies of the Nixon admiistration that she didn’t approve of. She lived to be about 103 years old.

San Francisco Bay Historic Cable Car Steep Streets Alcatraz California Stock Photo - Download Image Now - iStockLesa and I went to San Francisco on our honeymoon in 1987 and there was my old world in another incarnation, a married man “seeing” the cable cars, Golden Gate Park, and other sites from my wife’s perspective. Of course we sent to fisherman’s wharf, changed over all the years, and enjoyed the cable cars. And, we visited the family that was still around.

When I was young, I thought I’d end up living in San Francisco. I loved those wonderful hills. But as I grew older, the city grew out of reach: I could no longer afford it. The three-story aparment building where my aunt lived is now a private home worth around $2,000,000. And then, too, all  my employment offers were in the Atlanta area which is quite another world. And that includes California politics which have slid further to the left than I carew for.

Vera’s old house is still there with a blur from Google Street View. She lived on the top floor with a bay window that gave her pretty much the entire city to watch. Years ago, a short dead-end street ran behind the buildings so I always parked my car at the fourth floor level and walked in her back door. I’ve cropped the picture close to avoid showing the modern home built on the right that doesn’t match the neighborhood (and looks ugly).

I had plans for this house when I was little and didn’t know the ways of the world. I always thought it needed an elevator. In many ways, my heart resides in on 20th Street between Sanchez (where Vera lived) and Dolores (where I lived).

Unlike Tony Bennett, I can’t (on the advice of my lawyers) sing the old song for you, you know, the one about little cable cars climbing halfway to the stars, so this post is a brief taste of where I grew up off and on.

–Malcolm

If your zip code is 94027, congratulations

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Southern U.S.

According to online information, if you live in the Silicon Valley town of Atherton, you probably already know that the average cost of a house there is $7 million and that 94027 is the most affluent zip code in the country. Marketers, political pollsters, and online data dealers also know it. Everyone who wants your money or your vote knows where you live and wants to get to know you better.

We are always worried about data breaches on sites like Facebook because our personal information–zip code, address, shopping habits, etc.–is used by marketers in targeting audiences for advertising. As for Atherton, we shouldn’t be surprised that the town is both affluent and in California because the state has 91 of the United States’ most expensive zip codes.

My first thought is that I cannot imagine buying, much less living in, a multimillion-dollar house, that is, one that’s worth more than all of the houses in my neighborhood. Second, I see one reason California has a homeless problem: regular people with regular jobs cannot afford the housing costs, much less people below the poverty line.

I was born in the San Francisco Bay area, a place I could not afford to live now, and I found that when I identified California on Facebook as my home state, I ran into a lot of trouble in political discussions because people assumed I was not only rich and entitled but probably believed in absurd concepts like sanctuary cities. (I don’t.) So, I changed my Facebook “hometown” to the one in Florida where I grew up.  That stopped a lot of abusive, profiler-style comments.

However, it opened up other nasty remarks because most people know I live in Georgia now. The default view people outside the South have of a Georgia resident is that s/he lot only longs for the purported glory days of Dixie and the Confederacy, but is more likely than not a racist. This makes it difficult to have meaningful discussions on Facebook about politics, race, immigration, and similar subjects because I’m suspected of being a white supremacist until proven otherwise. That’s hard to do at a time when the politically correct belief is that all whites are racist whether they know it or not.

We used to worry about a future in which an oppressive “big brother” government controlled everything. The government already knows too much about us. Marketers probably know more. But the most dangerous thing is other people who want to take my state or zip code of residence and pair that up with everything I say or write and then compile that into a worthiness profile that tells them whether I’m with them or against them. The fact that I don’t know who “them” is doesn’t factor into the PC algorithms.

What a mess.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell

Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing

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Be careful where you say you’re from on Facebook

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life8 Comments

I no longer list Berkeley, California as the place where I’m from on Facebook because in “debates,” people say, “well, of course, Malcolm would say that, look where he’s from. We don’t need him telling people in Georgia what to think.”

I was born at Alta Bates Hospital, but don’t tell anyone.

My family is basically from California, with my late relatives living in Berkeley, Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, and Palo Alto. I think I was in high school (in Florida) when my father told me he could never go back because the farms and orchards had all been ploughed up and turned into developments, the places Pete Seeger said were houses like little boxes all made of ticky tacky and just the same.

I can’t go back either. For one thing, I can’t afford it. For another, I think the state has lost its connection to reality, a connection that always was fairly tenous on a good day.  Sorry, folks, but I really can’t support a state that says illegal immigrants should have a right to vote.

So, in these Facebook “debates,” I suppose people thought I support all the lunacy associated with California these days. During the Vietnam War protest era, I was part of that lunacy because (a) I hated the war, and (b) had an apartment in San Francisco’s Mission District while my ship was in port across the Bay and had trouble anywhere I went in a Navy uniform.

When I was told on Facebook that “they” (the people in the thread) didn’t need a person from a crazy state telling people in the South that he (meaning me) thought the state and federal governments had no right to legislate or otherwise mess up women’s health care, including the right to an abortion, I said, “ladies, I’ve lived in the South longer than anyone else commenting on this thread.”

Huh? I said that I grew up in Florida from the first grade to college and now live in Georgia where my wife was born. We live on a farm that’s been in her family for five generations. They were surprised. They were happy to see that I had changed the town where I’m from to Tallahassee, Florida, and appreciated the fact that I like boiled peanuts, collard greens, mullet, grits, and cathead biscuits.

However, according to their assessment, a California birth certificate meant that even if you left the state at an early age, you were more or less the devil’s spawn and couldn’t possibly go to enough church services to get even with the Lord. If not that, then I was probably dropped on my head in the hospital.

So there it was. Clearly, my identification with California was an albatross around my neck. In the old days (whatever that means) people said Florida really wasn’t truly Southern. My response was that North Florida was/is about as Southern as you can get and that unlike other states in the Confederacy, “we” weren’t conquered by the North during the Civil War. Okay, so we’re overrun by snowbirds every year and from Live Oak to Miami, the state’s been pretty much ruined by developers who’ve paved over everything there that used to be good and created endless sprawl.

But, I digress.

On the minus side, now that I’ve changed my Facebook hometown to Tallahassee, everyone thinks I’m a racist. When they push that view too hard, I mention that the biggest race riots in the country all happened outside the South.

Is there a safe place out there I can claim as my hometown?

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell has written a bunch of novels set in the South, or partly in the South, including the Florida Folk Magic Trilogy.

 

 

District of Columbia Secedes from Union

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire2 Comments

New Columbia, August 8, 2018, Star-Gazer News Service–In an announcement that came as no surprise to those who saw the writing on D. C. license plates, Washington D.C. seceded from the Unite States at midnight and named itself New Columbia.

“We did it for the same reason the colonies threw off the oppressive yoke of England in 1775,” said Interim head of state, James Otis. “And that is the tyranny of taxation without representation.”

New Columbia officials said the action was taken because petitions for voting rights have been denied, statehood attempts have been stifled, a more provocative slogan couldn’t be agreed upon for license plates, and Maryland refused to consider taking back the 6.34 square mile site.

According to informed sources, New Columbia now controls all the armed forces of the United States inasmuch as those forces answer to the Federal Government.

“Unlike the Secesh of 1861,” said Otis, “we have the military power to stand our ground.”

To emphasize New Columbia’s power, thirteen B-52 bombers carpet-bombed Fort Sumter with red, white, and blue water balloons, leaving Charleston area officials all wet. In a symbolic gesture from an earlier era, New Columbia officials dumped tea produced by American growers into the Potomac River

In related news, California seceded from the United States at 12:01 a.m. since, as officials in Sacramento said, “we’ve been ignoring Federal law for years.” They were quick to point out that they were not allying themselves with New Columbia.

Political analysts believe that Congress will be disbanded soon because it is now made up of officials from outside New Columbia. “It’s largely a money sink anyway,” said Otis.

As of press time this morning, world markets were reacting favorably to the action.

Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

 

Mexico empty as entire population moves to SoCal

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

Sacramento, November 21, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–California officials confessed early today that they were “thoroughly gobsmacked” (completamente sorprendido) when the entire population of Mexico moved into the state’s sanctuary cities for “a brand new life” (vida maravillosa).

Wikipedia graphic (Most people don’t realize California is a red state.)

“This is a form of CalExit that, frankly, wasn’t on our drawing boards,” said state planning director Frank Smith. “All we tried to do with our sanctuary cities initiatives was provide neighborhoods for the cheap labor our agribusiness companies need in order to survive.”

Mexican officials, who say they are no longer Mexican officials, said that the country chose a “free and reasonably lavish” California lifestyle over the stress of fighting poverty and drug lords south of the border.

“Some will criticize us for leaving our culture behind,” said a man who identified himself as Mr. Fox. “But that’s not true. We brought it with us, and that it includes real Mexican food (verdadera comida Mexicana) rather than the Taco Bell faux variety.”

While lettuce growers are applauding the fact that their workers will no longer have to fight border guards–and the proposed wall–on their morning commute, they admitted that most companies will shift their corporate headquarters to New Jersey to escape probable tax increases.

“Just think, we used to laugh about the once-famous government money grabs in Tax-a-chusetts,” said iceberg lettuce manager Jonas Wilkerson. “Now, the tax-and-spend experts have moved out here.”

Informed sources (personas informadas) believe many native Californians, who have been staying solvent by taking frequent trips to Las Vegas, will simply move to Nevada so reduce household expenses and state taxes.

“Hell (infierno),” one of the sources said, “just look at the state’s proposed pot taxes. They’re going to be so high that buying weed off the street will be cheaper than buying legal weed–and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Wilkerson agrees. “I read in the newspaper several days ago that the legislature passed a law that allows the unemployed to form a union that gives members the right to not work along with the right to put up homes in other people’s yards without being arrested for trespassing.”

Smith said that he thought the Mexican population’s move occurred as soon as a district judge blocked the administration’s plan to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities.

“I’m somewhat amused at the historic karma operating here as California returns to the days when Spanish was its official language,” Smith told reporters at an emergency press conference on the governor’s lawn, adding, “Este es un gran día para California.”

–Story by Jock Stewart, special investigative reporter

 

 

Book Review: ‘Goatsong’ by Patricia Damery

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, fiction, reviews8 Comments

Each chapter heading of Patricia Damery’s beautifully written novel Goatsong begins with the words “tell me about.” Sophie’s daughter Stacey is asking her mother to tell her the old and ever-changing family stories about the days she spent as a ten-year-old child with the three Goat Women on Huckleberry Mountain and was reborn into the fullness of the world.

Young Sophie’s single mother works as a waitress at an all-night diner and sleeps all day, sometimes alone and sometimes with the man she brings home: “Ma didn’t want me making noise during the day while she slept, so I left the house and did all kinds of things most kids would not have the opportunity to indulge in, you might say.”

That summer, Sophie meets Nelda, Dee and Ester on the mountain above the Russian River in northern California, and in the process of learning about herding goats, “logging in” garbage dumped alongside the roads, and dancing naked in the meadow, she discovers love and acceptance from her ad hoc surrogate family. Among other things, Sophie learns to see and acknowledge that which others often miss, roadside trash included.

Wise, practical and nurturing, Nelda knows the Goatsong. Strong, persistent and dependable, Dee takes exception to those who dump garbage on the mountain as well as those who won’t lift a hand to stop it. Forever taking notes as the women do their daily errands, the relatively silent Ester is a witness, logging in the garbage. She finds, for example:

“1 beer bottle, label torn and unreadable, green.
1 plastic freezer bag, Safeway, good condition.
1 16 oz. paper cup, 7-11, good condition.”

The three Goat Women, who know they are “undesirables” from the townspeople’s point of view, accept Sophie as one of their own during their daily adventures on a mountain that Damery describes with the prose of a poet. The novel is a hymn to nature and natural living as well as an eternal and memorable story. Original, unorthodox and wise, the Goat Women provide Sophie with an unfettered, practical and loving worldview that is absent at her home and school.

In their own way, the goats (Natalie, Boris and Hornsby) are also Sophie’s teachers. The author, who has run a biodynamic farm in the Napa Valley for the past twelve years with her husband, said on her blog this past summer that “Walking the goats is truly an art.” Damery brings her knowledge of that art into her novel, creating goat characters who are as three dimensional and essential to the story as the women.

In the introduction, Damery writes that “Goatsong is the mysterious combination of humility and that essential ability to climb above, like a goat, or a song. To know the Goatsong of tragedy, Nelda told me, is to be reborn.”

When you read Goatsong, you are breathing in fresh air off the Pacific ocean, smelling the sweet scent of the bay laurel, and cooling your tired feet in sacred streams flowing through old redwoods in the company of wise women who, without agenda, may well change you as they changed the ten-year-old Sophie in those old family stories about the town of Huckleberry on the Russian River.

—Malcolm

a young woman’s difficult journey