The Redwood Coast

Volume 15, Number 1 Review Winter 2013 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with the Independent Coast Observer architecture

By Her Own Design

Zara Raab

he young Wendy Bertrand was one of twelve pioneering Bay TArea women who gathered to share their experiences in a traditionally male-dominated field. The group, Orga- atory

v nization of Women Architects (OWA), is still a place where women trade ideas and support in their professional and personal lives. It is hard to overestimate the role of such organizations in the burgeoning Women’s Movement of the 1970s, as witnessed in Bertrand’s inven- Solar Obser Harestua tive, creatively designed memoir and Venus transiting the sun on June 8, 2004, as seen from Norway social history of the era, Enamored with Place: As Woman, As Architect (Eye on Place, 2012). The young Bertrand, recently gradu- Star-struck Scientists ated from Berkeley’s architectural degree program, soon begins a long career in government, overseeing architectural Astronomy and the human imagination projects for the Navy, while all the time single-handedly raising her daughter. Stephen Bakalyar So her daughter can attend the French- American Bilingual School in San Francisco, Bertrand buys a charming, he image seen by French Journals from the expeditions describe nail in the coffin of belief in an Earth- weathered “Workers’ Victorian” on a priest, philosopher and scien- harrowing conditions of travel. Astrono- centered cosmos. But his promotion of steep hill in San Francisco in 1975, tist Pierre Gassendi in 1631 mer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah heliocentrism cost him house arrest, the calling it her maisonette. Bertrand is got him worked up. “I have Dixon sailed for Sumatra on behalf of banning of his books, and anguish. In a passionate, throwing herself into both found him, I have seen him Great Britain’s Royal Society. Three letter to a friend: “Under the lying mask Twhere no one has ever seen him before!” days out of port they were attacked by a of religion, this war against me that con- her career and maisonette on 27th Street, with its vistas of the Bay and East Bay Gassendi wrote to a German colleague. 34-gun French frigate. With eleven dead tinually restrains and undercuts me in all hills. From the moment she moves in, The object of his excitement was Mer- from an hourlong battle, the astronomers’ directions, so that neither can help come this house becomes one of two true loves cury. He had made the first-ever observa- battered ship limped back to port. Mason to me from outside nor can I go forth to of her life. (The second is a cabin in tion of a planet transiting the Sun—the and Dixon resigned their commission, defend myself.” Over the centuries the Gasquet in remote Northern California.) orbit having brought it to a point directly but after the Society threatened a lawsuit Vatican’s position softened, and finally, in “I slowly engaged in a tenderly curious between the Earth and the Sun. The planet and destruction of their reputation, the 1992, it formally cleared Galileo of any acquaintance with my living space,” appeared as a small black dot moving two continued their mission. (Names wrongdoing. Bertrand writes, “exploring the limita- with imperceptible speed across the image sound familiar? They later surveyed the Edwin Hubble’s proclamation that the tions and opportunities” of the space, as of the Sun’s disk. Most of us have been disputed boundary between Pennsylvania several spiral nebulae he observed were “preening and nesting became an integral captivated occasionally by extraterres- and Maryland, which became infamously galaxies outside of our own Milky Way part” of her San Francisco life. Bertrand trial images, not reacting with Gassendi’s known as the Mason-Dixon Line, separat- changed our view of the universe, but the pays attention to her space as she might intensity, perhaps, but often with a sense ing the Northern states from the slave- idea was initially rejected by many as- to a lover or as a mother attends her of awe. Such was my experience while owning South.) The ocean was not the tronomers. He first published his findings child. Like any artist, she undertakes the watching the transit of Venus in June only hazardous location. Frenchman Jean- in The New York Times and then presented house in large part because she sees its 2012, an event that won’t happen again Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche encountered them in a paper at the 1925 meeting of the possibilities. “How could I hold on to for 105 years. many difficulties on his 4000-mile trip American Astronomical Society. By then the house’s century-old character while After Gassendi’s view of Mercury, from Paris to Tobolsk, Siberia, making the conflicts of ideas about the cosmos were still making the place contemporary? many astronomers observed its subsequent trek by horse-drawn coach on rutted roads fought with words—albeit acrimoniously What could be done to catch the country transits, including a young Edmond Hal- and by sleds on snow and frozen rivers, at times—in journals and conferences. feeling in the city—with modesty and ley. Years later, publishing in Proceedings the vehicles frequently breaking down. Occasionally laymen are simultaneous elegance?” of the Royal Society, he urged astronomers Some did not reach their destination in participants with astronomers in first-time Not only her architectural training, throughout the world to observe the next time, and cloudy skies thwarted many observations, as when fragments of the but also Bertrand’s youthful travels guide transit of Venus in 1761; he knew he observation attempts. But the successful disintegrating comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 her renovations as she recalls the domes- would likely be dead by then. His paper images were received by the scientific crashed into Jupiter in 1994. I remember tic arrangement in other cultures, where described how measurements would community with appreciation, and the the television broadcast that showed both “sleeping took place next to clay fire pits allow calculation of the Sun’s distance observers’ status was elevated. the image of Jupiter and the telescope’s for cooking, low tables for entertaining, from Earth—unknown at the time, and Sadly, many scientists throughout control room—and exclaiming along cribs for childcare, stools for repairing considered the most important astronomi- history faced skepticism or even crushing with scientists, “My god, the impact scar tools, and nooks for musical instruments cal fact to be determined. The method rejection after presenting new findings. is larger than the diameter of earth,” fol- or materials for crafts.” As the Mirabelle required observations from different loca- For example, Galileo’s 1610 sighting and lowed by thoughts of potential catastrophe plum tree in her yard blooms over the tions on the Earth. (Transits of Mercury description of Jupiter’s moons put another here. Jupiter’s massive size makes it a decades, putting forth its white petals are frequent, but its proximity to the sun powerful vacuum cleaner of its neighbor- and then its tiny, delicate golden plums, precludes useful calculations.) Point the Hubble at hood; Earth’s warp of space is relatively Bertrand extends and reshapes the spaces Astronomers responded to Halley’s puny, but sooner or later we will beckon of the maisonette, thinking of the bed- call, petitioning their kings and parlia- a small spot in the something large that intersects our orbit. rooms as not simply “nighttime caves” ments for funds. Not only would the infor- sky that appears Congress has tasked NASA to find, by or “master bedrooms” (that “rudely mation be a great scientific achievement, 2020, 90 percent of near-earth objects ringing title”) but as spaces for enrich- they claimed, but their participation would largely empty to larger than 140 meters in diameter. To ing active daily life. Like every artist, also redound positively to the reputation date several programs have identified Bertrand revises, adding a small balcony of their countries. Nearly 250 cooperating ground-based tele- thousands of qualifying objects. here, an office nook there, first painting scientists from England, France, Germany, scopes, take many the ceiling of her the lean-to bathroom Sweden and Russia, among others, set ess dramatic but nonetheless iconic a disastrous salmon, then repainting it a out to observe the 1761 Venus transit. exposures over a pe- Limages of these spacefaring times are softer yellow. It was the first international scientific pictures from the Mars Reconnaissance These are the “socially more pro- project. Remarkably, it took place during riod of several days, Orbiter circling above the planet. The lat- gressive years” of the 1970s, when the Seven Years’ War, the first global war, and an astounding est shows the SUV-sized Curiosity and the workplaces celebrated International engaging the great powers of the era, with tracks it made in the Martian soil during Women’s Years, as well as the history of theaters in Europe, India, North America, number of galaxies its initial wanderings. There is something and on the high seas. uncanny about a picture of one extrater- African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian appear.

See BERTRAND page 10 See STAR page 6 Page 2 The Redwood Coast Review Winter 2013 editor’s note What Hath Roth Wrought? Stephen Kessler

hilip Roth’s recent announce- and Roth’s friend and role model Saul Bel- nd yet there is an unusual integrity ment that he is done with writ- low. The first Zuckerman trilogy alone (The Ain having the courage to say Enough ing novels must have come as Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and The already. There’s something pathetic about a great relief to all the younger Anatomy Lesson, eventually published in an aging artist reduced to a fading imitation writers whose air he has been one volume as Zuckerman Bound) is one of his stronger earlier work, or repeating Psucking out of the American literary at- of the most brilliant accounts of a writer’s himself ad nauseam with a once-successful mosphere for the last 53 years, especially journey into catastrophic success. The shtick. For every Picasso or Elliott Carter during his extraordinary late-career surge earlier Portnoy’s Complaint unleashed an there is a badly diminished Norman Mailer of the 1990s. As by far the most decorated ethnic id never before seen in American or, worse, a Jack Kerouac, who fell apart US author of his time—having bagged literature and had a profound influence, for after his first great book and never equaled every major prize and critical accolade, better and worse, on subsequent generations that original achievement and died with- some of them several times over, except the of identity-obsessed complainers. His ex- out ever reaching maturity. The trajectory Nobel—and after a streak of outstanding traordinary novels of the nineties (Sabbath’s of Roth’s career, from Goodbye, Colum- books in his sixties followed by a string of Theater, American Pastoral, The Human bus in 1959 (the first of his two National

smaller but powerful novellas in his seven- g Stain and I Married a Communist, possibly Book Awards), has been a mostly upward ties, Roth’s decision to hang up his pen a the greatest divorce-revenge novel ever curve, and perhaps the gradual decline of (revealed in a front-page interview in the written) contain such an intensity of percep- his powers has encouraged him to exit the Sunday New York Times last November 18) tion, reflection and expression that they left stage before he becomes a ghost. Despite caught almost everyone, including me, by this reader indelibly imprinted (or infected) the consoling philosophical perspective

surprise. Admirers of his work are no doubt E ll ingv O r j a n F. with the Roth vision (or virus). Perhaps the sometimes available to older artists, Roth’s disappointed to be deprived of future Roth Philip Roth antihero of Nemesis, Bucky Cantor, who relentless negativity of recent years appears books—though plenty of the old ones are attempts to escape from and ends up spread- to have led him down a dead-end street. worth rereading—but what struck me was ing polio, is an allegorical stand-in for his The irony is, if the Times interview is to the unthinkable idea that he could even con- Despite the consoling author, who has by example encouraged be believed, that his renunciation of fiction sider giving up writing, as most real writers, others to engage in the fruitless pursuit of has opened a new and happier chapter in his especially “successful” ones, are compelled philosophical perspec- fiction’s terrible truths. The pursuit is fruit- life. He tells McGrath that he now is able to to keep at it as long as their health and their less because the greatest literature raises entertain guests, to enjoy meals with friends, wits allow. Roth, obsessed with the great tive sometimes avail- more questions than it answers, and is not to have time for other people, and thus be unanswerable questions and still writing able to older artists, just stellar storytelling but an attempt to relieved of the burden of his own demons. well, seemed the kind of person who would tackle the unspeakable, “the dread realities He is no longer, as he described himself in just carry on until he dropped. But accord- Roth’s relentless nega- of life,” as Bob Dylan memorably put it. an earlier interview, an “emergency” whose ing to what he told Charles McGrath of the Unlike Roth, Dylan seems to have kept his creative compulsions require constant atten- Times, he has said everything he has to say tivity of recent years bleak deadpan humor as he slouches toward tion. He is free at last. He has, at least for and is tired of the daily effort to wrestle his appears to have led geezerhood, still writing and touring, while now, broken up with the bitchy muses who sentences into submission. the older Roth, now pushing eighty, is as have been tormenting him with increasingly Having read his most recent and presum- him down a dead-end dependably dire as the scowl on his face in dark themes of human defeat. ably final novel, Nemesis (about a polio most of his author photos. Dylan may not But I wonder whether the real story of epidemic), and before that The Humbling street. be happy, but he’s still funny. his life is sufficiently fabulous to keep his (about a washed-up actor who shoots What is bugging Roth is nothing less restless imagination occupied. If his earlier himself) and Indignation (about a feckless narrative voice still had some fire in it, some than The Human Condition—the existential autobiographical writings are to be believed, college student who winds up disemboweled hope, some defiance of fate, if only in the absurdity of people being born doomed, that Philip Roth started out as a good boy eager on a battlefield in Korea) and Everyman intense energy he brought to his engagement is, mortal, how profoundly unfair—so why to please his parents (as he writes in Nem- (about the inexorable decline and demise of with various forms of personal tragedy. keep complaining about it as to a God who esis, “there’s nobody less salvageable than an average Joe) and Exit Ghost (about the Over the last ten or twelve years Roth isn’t listening and probably doesn’t exist a ruined good boy”) and has spent the better sexual humiliation of the author’s alter ego appears to have surrendered to the bleak- but will smite you anyway. Yet Samuel part of his days parked at his desk inventing Nathan Zuckerman) and The Dying Animal est possible view of human destiny. This Beckett found something to say about noth- imaginary characters who have acted out (about a beautiful young woman doomed gloomy vision reaches its nadir in Nemesis, ing. Dave Brubeck bopped till he dropped. variations on his life and times—counter- by breast cancer), I begin to understand which reads like a toxic mixture of the Book The popular novelist Herman Wouk is 97 lives, if you will, to borrow a title from one that Roth as a novelist could not drive any of Job, Kafka’s The Trial and Camus’s The and has just published a novel about trying of his most vexing and inventively compli- deeper into despair. His books weren’t Plague, a triple-whammy potent enough to make a movie about Moses, an up-to-date cated books. But whatever disappointments exactly cheery in previous decades, but the to subdue the novelist’s formerly manic postmodernist-populist take on the arche- and disillusionments he has found amid the or ironic or gallows-black Jewish humor. typal lawgiver, who also happens (like Roth glory of his own literary achievement, why Roth appears to be engaged, especially in and Wouk) to be Jewish. And Sonny Rol- such a joyless swan song? Why the unre- Nemesis, in hand-to-hand combat, a fight lins, now past 80 and in a different spiritual lenting lament? Why hang up the Louisville The Redwood Coast to the death, with a God he doesn’t even tradition, keeps blowing his heart out on Slugger when it may still have some homers believe in—a God who, as he pungently the tenor saxophone in electrifying live per- in it? puts it in the final pages of that book, is both formances of what he has described as “the Like any other criminal, Roth has the “a sick fuck and an evil genius.” How else exaltation of existence.” In other words, it right to remain silent, but somehow I sus- Review to explain the demonic torments of World is not inevitable that one writes or plays or pect we have not heard the last from him. Stephen Kessler War II or a polio epidemic, except that no creates oneself into a spent silence. There Editor such God exists and people are subject to may in fact be an inexhaustible wealth of destruction by random irrational forces as material, however grim, to convert, trans- Stephen Kessler’s new translation, Poems of Daniel Barth well as their own mistakes. Like Jacob form and otherwise alchemize into art. Consummation by Vicente Aleixandre, is due Daniela Hurezanu wrestling with the angel, the writer seems in January from Black Widow Press. Jonah Raskin to have been looking for a blessing in the Rebecca Taksel struggle with art, but ultimately he has Contributing Editors found none forthcoming and so has decided to cry Uncle. He throws in the towel. He Arthur Winfield Knight, 1937-2012 Linda Bennett smashes the tablets. Production Director At the same time he admits to McGrath that he is now “working for” his handpicked The Redwood Coast Review is published quarterly (January, April, July and October) authorized biographer, Blake Bailey, by A Knight Errant of the New Old West by Friends of Coast Community Library in writing down thousands of pages of notes, cooperation with the Independent Coast presumably true to the best of his recollec- Observer. The opinions expressed in these tion (an always questionable presumption), rthur Winfield Knight, whose poems Knight’s style in both verse and prose pages are those of the individual writers and on what he can recall of his life story, boxes do not necessarily reflect the views of FoCCL, and stories appeared from time to has a minimalism that relies on clarity, sim- full of notes, “so many,” Bailey says, that “I time in the RCR, died last September plicity and brevity, with short declarative the ICO or the advertisers. Contents copyright won’t get to read some of them for years.” A © 2013 The Redwood Coast Review. All rights 7 at his home in Yerington, Nevada. He was sentences and sparse descriptions, offering Roth’s strategy, it appears, like Steve Jobs in 74. just enough detail to evoke a vivid scene revert to authors and artists on publication. his lengthy interviews with his biographer We welcome your submissions. Please From the late sixties into the eighties while leaving space for the reader’s imagi- send essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and letters Walter Isaacson, is to control the narrative Knight was among the most-published poets nation to fill in the rest. Dry, I would call of the tome he expects to be his tombstone. to the Editor, The Redwood Coast Review, c/o ICO, in the United States, his verse turning up it, laconic—with a wry romanticism—like PO Box 1200, Gualala, CA 95445. Manuscripts Though he says he is “not Frank Sinatra,” regularly in hundreds of little magazines the high desert where he spent his last years, should be typed, double-spaced, with the and not intending to come out of retire- during the “mimeo revolution” and after. and the movie cowboys and small-town author’s name, address, phone, email and ment like that other New Jersey prodigy, word count at the top of the first page. Postal He also served that small-press indepen- people he knew and idealized in his writing. it’s easy to imagine the Bailey biography as dent-publishing renaissance as publisher of He was both a tough-minded avatar of the mail only. A self-addressed, stamped envelope its subject’s final work of fiction. He wants is required for our reply. his own journal, the unspeakable visions Old West and just this side of sentimental. the last word before other, unauthorized and of the individual, which championed Beat Born in San Francisco in 1937, Knight On the Web: stephenkessler.com/rcr.html less-sympathetic biographers of the future Subscription information: See page 9. Generation writers when they were still moved to Petaluma as a child and gradu- Friends of Coast Community Library is a perform their own investigations into his shunned by the respectable literati and ated from Petaluma High. After earning an nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. life. long before they became mass-marketing MA from San Francisco State in 1962, he Tax-deductible donations may be sent to opportunities for corporate publishers. He embarked on a long career as an English Coast Community Library, PO Box 808, Point hile we’re waiting for Bailey’s book proudly remained on the fringes of commer- teacher at various high schools and colleges Arena, CA 95468. The library is located at Wwe can look back at Roth’s work from 225 Main Street in Point Arena. Telephone cial literature, cultivating a western ethos around the country, culminating in a lengthy a perspective more typically posthumous. I of the restless, untamable rambler, writing tenure at California University of Pennsyl- 707.882.3114. believe some of those books will endure as Thank you for your support! eight novels and thousands of poems and vania, about an hour south of Pittsburgh— part of our cultural patrimony alongside the bringing them out with micro-presses all classics of Melville and Twain and Faulkner across the land. See knight page 9 Winter 2013 The Redwood Coast Review Page 3 Writers & Writing Invisible Men Forgotten writers of San Francisco State Terry Ross

here was a time when I thought of myself as a writer of fiction. And I was born late enough I ask myself why some young to imagine that others could teach me how to become one, that experienced, published practi- writers thrive and continue writ- tioners could take my beginner’s stories in hand ing while others flash briefly and Tand lead me into the world of accomplished, powerful fic- tion. If I had been born a generation or two earlier, I would then fade from the public view. never have entertained such a notion and would simply have tried to become a writer by writing. But by the mid-sixties, Are the early books of these when I graduated from college, the teaching of writing was slowly beginning to proliferate. The University of Iowa’s forgotten authors less worthy longstanding program had been copied at Stanford and, than those of their more famous more recently, at San Francisco State College. At loose ends in the Bay Area after graduation, I worked colleagues? in a railroad yard, read furiously, and wrote continuously. After about six months, I decided to try to get into the writ- ing program at San Francisco State, which had entered the and read. I now have a good shelf full, a couple of dozen business with a vengeance by adding Wright Morris and (including nine Kay Boyles), and they’re unique in my Kay Boyle to their faculty. They offered a program catering modest library, because for the most part they are by writers to would-be fictioneers, poets, and even playwrights. Excit- whom time has overlooked. ingly, the sole criterion for admission was a writing sample. I ask myself why some young writers thrive and continue I gathered together what I took to be my best stories and writing while others flash briefly (or merely glow) and then sent them off. In short order, the English department, eager fade from the public view. Are the early books of these for- for student head count and tuition dollars, placidly accepted gotten authors less worthy than those of their more famous me. colleagues? Is there something absent from their work, some In those days, the San Francisco State program, not as quality that inhibits further development or prevents readers famous as Wallace Stegner’s older one at Stanford (which from embracing them? The answer to these questions, I have had already “produced” Ken Kesey), distinguished itself by come to believe, is no. Arthur Foff offering not an MFA, a master of fine arts (no real studying, just a lot of writing classes) but an MA in English. To justify erbert Wilner’s novel All the Little Heroes (Bobbs- and deadpan irony is redolent of other Jewish writers of the this degree, the department obliged us to take as many lit- HMerrill, 1966) is not a success. The story of the inter- time—Bruce Jay Friedman, Bellow, Philip Roth, not a bad erature courses as writing workshops. Our “creative” thesis secting lives of a wild bunch of New York kids and a failed, thing. Later, illness curtailed his career; he died at the age of —in my case, a novel—was balanced by a requirement that ailing doctor, it comes brilliantly alive with the kids and 51 in 1975. we undergo a four-hour oral exam in literature. I am still delighted by Leo Litwak’s novel Waiting for I studied writing with men named Clay Putnam, Herbert the News (Doubleday, 1969), the gritty, eloquent story of a Wilner and Arthur Foff. I also tried a class with Kay Boyle, Detroit labor organizer and his two teenaged sons. The para- one of the surviving literary lions of Paris in the twenties noid, racy milieu of big-city America in the years just before and thirties, but her idea of teaching was to set us short World War II is colorfully painted, and the central figure exercises, and I was too impatient to participate. I dropped Jake Gottlieb is lustily drawn. Litwak had published an ear- her class, but not before I had garnered the sole benefit that lier novel, To the Hanging Gardens (World, 1964), full of I chose to accept from her, an enthusiasm for a writer I had characters in extremis, violence and philosophical systems not heard of until then, Grace Paley. marquerading as characters, to which Waiting for the News is Clay Putnam was a morose man in his forties whose vastly superior. But again, no more novels. Litwak collabo- reputation rested entirely on his having written some excep- rated with Wilner on a book about the SF State student strike tionally good short fiction in his twenties. Herbert Wilner, of 1968-69 (which drastically postponed my degree), called on the other hand, was still an active fiction writer. A novel College Days in Earthquake Country (Random House, had appeared in 1966, and a collection of stories came out 1971) and then, much later, published a memoir of his war in 1968. Arthur Foff had published two novels ten years experiences in Europe, The Medic: Life and Death in the apart, the first in 1947. And later I came to know, but did not Last Days of WWII (Algonquin, 2001). In both these books, take classes from, Leo Litwak and James Leigh, two other his capacity for direct, blunt, yet sensitive prose makes them faculty novelists, both active writers. a pleasure to read. In time I came to understand that I was a much better James Leigh wrote a very funny novel featuring a teen- reader than writer. My lit profs praised me while my writing aged protagonist attending high school in Los Angeles, teachers maintained, for the most part, a discreet and not What Can You Do? (Harper & Row, 1965). He then followed especially encouraging silence. I drifted toward literary it up with his masterpiece, a wonderful book called Down- criticism, and once my degree was finished—my novel was stairs at Ramsey’s (Harper & Row, 1968), a Lolita-esque accepted almost with comment—I went on to study litera- tale told by an inquisitive and engaging old Englishman, ture and slowly gave up the idea of writing fiction. again set in Los Angeles. I don’t know of any further novels But in the years following, I picked up, in used-book beyond The Rasmussen Disasters (Harper & Row, 1969), stores, some of the books the San Francisco State faculty Leo Litwak a detour into Terry Southern country that doesn’t age well. members had written—I had Wilner’s novel and short story Leigh told me in 1973—after laconically acknowledging that collection as well as novels by Foff, Litwak and Leigh. I falls flat with the older man. Why not, then, another novel, my thesis novel “demonstrated a certain comic gift”—that also collected quite a few books by Kay Boyle, whom I improving on the first? But Herb Wilner had a family to he had never made a dime on his novels and that he still found to be one of the finest short story writers of the twen- support and students to teach, and he concentrated on shorter found himself having to pitch his books hard to get them tieth century. But neither she nor Wright Morris was really fiction. In Dovisch in the Wilderness and Other Stories published. He seemed demoralized. of the San Francisco State “school.” They were visiting (Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) he came into his own. The title story luminaries, on campus one semester and gone the next. is a hilarious extended tale of a bookish Jewish shlemiel y sentimental favorite among the San Francisco Staters A year or so ago, I thought of writing about these SF in the California desert, and the others are pungent, sharp Mis Arthur Foff. A depressive individual seemingly State writers and found, online, other books, which I bought portraits of various oddball characters. Wilner’s language terminally blocked by the time I took his classes, he had showed real gifts as a young man. His 1947 first novelGlori - ous in Another Day (Lippincott) is very good. Its evocation of a San Francisco that still had its proletarian flavor and of the world of working-class dog breeders (specifically of pit bulls, for show and for fighting) is fresh, powerful and bitter-sweet. And the characters are superb. Scarcely less The Lovers accomplished is Foff’s second, and last, novel, North of Market (Harcourt, Brace, 1957). Again set in San Francisco, at Devil’s Slide it is another fine portrait of a fascinating city, with a cast of doomed, lively characters. Arthur Foff was not a happy man Both in black jeans, black t-shirts, and ended his life by suicide. But his books exhale a gener- sleek black car parked in the turnout, ous spirit and a strong taste for the joy of life, alongside an he leaning back against the concrete barricade awareness of its inevitable disappointments. And they are at cliff’s edge, precipitous drop very well written. to the cold ocean below— Foff—and Wilner and Leigh and Litwak—did not but the day is warm and clear become household names. But they could all write, and did and she is pressing herself so hot write, for a while. And the books of these San Francisco against him, kissing his mouth, State teachers are still out there, although out of print, to be her slender curving body savored, while one ponders the capriciousness of literary seen in silhouette fame. as I breeze by on the highway—his eyes glancing up to meet mine just in time to glimpse my knowing grin— and savor them diminishing in the mirror. Terry Ross lives in Portland and is the editor of the journal Black Lamb, where an earlier version of this essay first ap- —Stephen Kessler peared. James Leigh Page 4 The Redwood Coast Review Winter 2013 books Self-made Bombshell Pamela Malone

Marilyn the Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner Bloomsbury (2012), 528 pages She ran her own pro- duction company and ne movie star stands alone, an icon that will not die, whose fought the Fox Studios luminescence continues in per- tooth and nail as no petuity. Only one film goddess transcended all parameters, other actor of her time Oand that was Marilyn Monroe. She was a chimerical mystery who has inspired more did. She was not con- biographies than any other screen star. trolled by the authori- These include gossipy bios, like that of Earl Wilson; tributes to her unparalleled tarian men she had to eroticism, like the lyrical elegy by Norman Mailer; and hundreds of pedestrian filmog- deal with, the movie raphies. So the question can be asked, Who moguls, or her three needs another Marilyn Monroe biography? What more is there to say? husbands. Lois Banner has written a unique biogra- phy of Marilyn. Banner is a feminist schol- ar, professor of history and gender studies at liaison. The chapters are long. I found I the University of Southern California. She could only read one chapter in a sitting. It is also a Marilyn Monroe fan, with a special is a long book. You will know everything affinity for her subject. about Marilyn’s daily life, every person Banner brings a high level of scholar- she came in contact with, every bite she ship to this project. She interviewed many took. But the writing can be masterly, when people who knew Marilyn and had never Banner lets herself relax and just focus been interviewed before. She was allowed on Marilyn the person, for whom Banner to look at new archives and was indefati- has an intuitive empathy. In summing up

gable in her research. Marilyn’s life, and asking what Marilyn

e n Gree n lto i es/M Still, one could say, who cares? What chiv might have done if she’d lived beyond her

would turning yet another stone yield that is short thirty-six years, Banner writes, “that

r A e so important? The answer is that while the Th life is so filled with paradox, tricksterism, book is filled with information, much of it and passion achieved and thwarted that it is new, that is not what makes this such a good She ran her own production company the woman behind this artistic masterpiece, impossible to say what she would do. The biography. It is that Banner reveals the real and fought the Fox Studios tooth and nail as who was she? geography of Marilyn’s life remains wide Marilyn, the whole sculpted human being. no other actor of her time did. She was not Banner makes her real and believ- and deep, filled with the magic and mystery She does not present her, as so many books controlled by the authoritarian men she had able. She was a troubled woman who was that has made her into a transhistorical sym- have, as a tragic victim of a crazy mother, to deal with, the movie moguls, or her three a kaleidoscope of alter egos, a victim of bol of the American imagination.” domineering men and a cruel movie factory, husbands, Jim Dougherty, Joe DiMaggio, nightmares and insomnia, which led to a The other pitfall for any Marilyn biog- doomed to tragedy by her fame. Nor does and Arthur Miller. Instead she bent them to lifelong addiction to sleeping pills, tranquil- rapher is her death. Suicide or murder? she portray her, as most books do, as a film her own ends, and unfortunately in the pro- izers, amphetamines—a cornucopia from Here, Banner becomes a cold narrator, re- icon, goddess, unreachable, unknowable cess broke the chance for a lasting intimate the valley of the dolls. She was dependent moving her empathetic cloak, as she recites movie star. An object for the male gaze, relationship, something she always sought. on her psychiatrists, her acting coaches, the “facts” of the official version, suicide by forever to remain in that iconic nude pho- She had an insatiable hunger and drew both her caretakers. She could not be alone. overdose, and then goes into the multiple, tograph, perfect body, against a red velvet men and women into her vortex, where they She was needy to a point of becoming an confusing and conflicting witness accounts background. often got burned. all-consuming succubus to anyone that that have led to alternative theories of how Lois Banner is a feminist, and underly- came within her radius. But she was also a Marilyn was murdered. The culprits are ing this project is the question, was Marilyn here is no question she was a charis- successful powerful woman who controlled an odd mix of the Mafia, the FBI, the Fox a feminist trailblazer? But we are not hit Tmatic self-created icon, whose power her own career and manipulated others to studio executives, and the Kennedys, spe- over the head by a stated theory that Banner inspired the Aphrodite impulse in every conform to her desires. cifically Robert Kennedy. No conclusions then sets out to prove. This is not a treatise woman. All later female sex symbols Banner writes insightfully about this are drawn. Marilyn’s death is a requirement by Camille Paglia on the Madonna and the traced themselves back to Marilyn. Marilyn many-faceted, paradoxical, flesh-and-blood for any biographer, but one is left with the Whore. Banner simply lets Marilyn’s story herself looked to Jean Harlow for inspira- human being. At the same time, Banner impression that her death will never be speak for itself. tion, but took that and surpassed it, reaching falls into the pitfall of well-researched satisfyingly explained. What does come Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jean a stratospheric place that has never been biography. She gives too much information. through is that powerful as Marilyn Monroe Mortenson, June 1, 1926, was dealt a bad equaled. We learn of every minute in Marilyn’s life, may have been in her influence and fame, hand. Her mother was unable to raise her, But this was Marilyn the icon, the bril- every movie, every wardrobe change, every she was vulnerable to forces greater than her and her father never knew her. Her mother, liant invention of Norma Jean. What about own, and was crushed by those dark forces. Gladys, was in and out of mental hospitals She was a strong player who inevitably most of her life. Marilyn was shuffled had to be destroyed. Whether it was the around from foster home to foster home and Kennedys or not, almost doesn’t matter. spent some time in an orphanage. Along Her Promethean daring could not go unchal- the way, she was sexually abused by an lenged. older man, a former British movie star, who boarded in one of the houses where Marilyn Production of the Next, Safe Happies anner presents credible information had been given refuge. Such a beginning Bthat Marilyn “was threatening to hold can doom a person’s life, and the lasting a press conference and make public a diary effects never left her. But Marilyn had a Years after they privatized the reservoirs, rivers and lakes she had kept of her conversations with Bob- mysterious inner strength that protected they finally took even the mountain peaks, by about politics, in which she had written her. She took over her own life, and starting leaving us with nothing. down what he’d told her about such matters in junior high, created her own means of as Cuba, the nuclear bomb, and his crusade survival, through the projected movie star, Our nothings mumble in abandoned schools. against the Mafia.” As well as the fact that Marilyn Monroe, she would become. Our nothings accompany us across empty fields she had been having affairs with both Rob- She set her own style—a sexy, tight skirt as we migrate now in search of our names. ert and Jack Kennedy. Marilyn’s autopsy and sweater style, broadcasting the color revealed an amount of Nembutal and chloral red—starting in junior high. And through- Rumored to be durable and pliable, hydrate “enough to kill several men, more out her career she would be in complete a new-age psychoactive neo-material, than the fifty tablets of Nembutal she had in control at all times of the image she chose they returned to harvest our nothings. her possession at the time she died.” to project. She died, yet lives on. And is most She was a free spirit, who loved nature; Substrates for the synthesis of new therapeutics splendidly resurrected in this biography, she was sexually free like a wild animal, marketed as the next, safe Happies, complete with iconic and alluring photos. who shared herself with men, as a gift. She users remember good-times they never had. Marilyn was most proud of her photograph- was spiritual. She had been raised as a ic modeling, in which she was completely in Christian Scientist. This religion linked sex, Although only a little better than placebos, control of what she chose to project, turning sin and hell, and was used to shame her. our new-and-improved nothings sell well at their Costcos, herself into something translucent. There But it also gave her a mystical foundation effecting a new normal, the side-effects yet to be reported are also never seen before casual photo- that she was able to draw from like nurtur- graphs, taken from the author’s personal ing water. as we migrate North in search of our disappeared, collection. All in all, a worthwhile read for Marilyn was a brilliant intellectual who their names on watchlists and school bulletin boards. anyone seriously interested in the phenom- could converse with famous thinkers on enon that was Marilyn Monroe. their level, she loved poetry and art, and was a good friend of the poet Carl Sand- —Robert S. Pesich burg. Marilyn wrote poetry. She loved nature, gardening, and her own nudity. Pamela Malone of Leonia, New Jersey, is a frequent contributor to the RCR.

Winter 2013 The Redwood Coast Review Page 5 movies Fifty Shades of Black and White How cinematographers used to paint with light Jane Merryman

our eyes are riveted on her face. Her dark-paint- The Third Man (1950) is classified as film noir, but it is think it’s his face, pockmarked, ravaged. Immediately fol- ed lips pout, her smoldery eyes gaze out beyond so far above others in this genre that I would give it its own lowing we were treated to Brief Encounter (1946) in which you, over your right shoulder. His face turns category. Based on the novel by Graham Greene, who also Howard has the romantic lead opposite Celia Johnson. This toward hers, in shadow but with enough light did the screenplay, it is far more literate than the usual film black-and-white gem is early David Lean, who later directed to reveal the down-curved eyebrows and tense in any genre. Carol Reed directs and also does the opening the epics Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, and Ymouth. Still, your eyes are on her, exactly where the director voice-over that introduces us in his laconic, matter-of-fact Lawrence of Arabia. and cinematographer want you to look. Her heart-shaped way to the sinister, nothing-is-as-it-seems postwar Vienna. visage is anchored at the point where the darkest and the The film won an Oscar for best cinematography. How could rief Encounter couldn’t be more different from these lightest shapes meet. Two pale dots in the dark background it not win, filmed on location against the skeletons of a BTechnicolor blockbusters. It uses the value scale of cut a diagonal toward her hair, his well-lit knuckles point once-elegant, bombed-out city, and with all those scenes in film noir, lots of darks, but it’s not menacing or violent. It’s up toward her chin. The angle of his nose directs us to her the sewers, creepy and dripping with what you don’t want romantic and poignant. Two good people, happily married face, the brightest part of the screen. It is all about her in this to think about—here the value scale is used superbly. The to other good people, meet accidentally in a train station and scene. Her lines, her emotional intensity. If he says anything, sound track is zither music played by its composer, Anton feel an ineffable connection, just the sort of setup you expect it is her reaction that is the subject. Such is the magic of a Karas. I can’t imagine any more fitting background music to find in a Noel Coward play, from which this film was black-and-white film that the lighting tells as much of the for this movie. adapted. The station, where trains come and go according story as the actors’ words. In fact, even more. I love the opening sequence of shattered Vienna and to schedule, is the principal set (typical David Lean and his This scene with Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart the four sectors, each one administered by a different ally: use of the power of place) and the other characters, although in Nicholas Ray’s film noir In a Lonely Place illustrates why Britain, France, Russia, and the United States. It isn’t long well delineated, are only incidental to the plot. I miss those old black-and-white movies. They are beautiful before we are at the cemetery where Holly Martens’s friend, Both Trevor and Celia are ordinary people, with ordinary compositions. I devour them whenever they show up on tele- Harry Lime, is being buried. After the ceremony we see a spouses and children, doing ordinary things—shopping, vision. Take Laura, an Otto Preminger film of many twists mysterious woman, played by Alida Valli, walking down a working, going to the movies. He’s a doctor with a mild and surprises. I watch it as often as I can even though I long allée of leafless, wintery trees. For the rest of the film, sense of humor. She’s a housewife, well organized and with know the ending. I love the elegance of each frame, painted Joseph Cotton’s character, Martens, tries to woo this sad, a wide circle of friends. Trevor is passionate—in the sense in tones of black and white, from opposite ends of the gray stateless girlfriend of the dead man, but she will have noth- of committed and caring—about medicine and his prac- scale, mingled with very dark grays. The darks and lights tice and she is drawn in by that bit of passion, an element lead my eye to the most important part of the screen and set entirely lacking in her life—she describes her husband as the mood. When young Laura is introduced into the plot, she Even before I took up painting kindly and unemotional. Both feel taken for granted by their wears clothes of middle and light gray. As she grows in ex- spouses. perience and in her mentor’s obsession, she appears in stark and learned some of the rules They agree to meet on the next Thursday when they whites and black. Even her hair and complexion are pushed normally come into the city. And there are more Thursdays to the ends of the scale. Midway through the film, Laura of composition I was drawn to after that. They enjoy a laugh at the cinema, stroll in the bo- returns to the mid-gray scale. She is no longer the focus of the old black-and-whites, but I tanical garden, have tea at the station while waiting for their attention as we turn to discovering who has been murdered separate trains. I wonder how different all this would seem if and who is the murderer. couldn’t say why. Painters ma- the sound track were something other than the relentless and Compare this film to Harvey, the perfect vehicle for bittersweet Piano Concerto Number 2 by Rachmaninoff. Jimmy Stewart, which is mostly in grays. Very few stark nipulate viewers of their works. Soon their relationship becomes deep and all-consuming. blacks and whites in any frame. This sets the mood, a light They move our eyes around in- This is where this little film becomes a great one. Now we comedy, nothing intense. have two good people, torn between duty and attraction, who Run Silent, Run Deep, a submarine saga of World War side the frame in certain ways. want to do the right thing. II in the Pacific, is a symphony of black and white. The Who want to do the right thing? Nobody worries about grays are crisp, deep, and full-bodied and seem to caress that in Mad Men. In this sense Brief Encounter seems ter- the plot, which is set mostly in the confined, tense space of an underwater warship. At night the sub runs silently on the surface, searching for its prey, a black shape against the bright, sparkling, moonlit sea. Scenes ashore play out in the middle range of grays, giving a completely different feeling, one of safety. Even before I took up painting and learned some of the rules of composition I was drawn to the old black-and- whites, but I couldn’t say why. Now I know something about how painters manipulate viewers of their works. They move our eyes around inside the frame in certain ways, and they keep our eyes in the frame for a nice long look. It’s very much like how advertisers attract you to their product, a seduction of the eye first and then the heart. This is accom- plished through use of the value scale, black at one end, white at the other, with a multitude of grays in between. I’ve done value sketches using one color and its degrees of intensity to understand how the position of darks and lights on the paper draws you to the focal point, what the painting is about. In the same way, on the screen your eyes lock on the place of greatest contrast between dark and light. Almost all my favorite films are in black and white. For a good storytelling, black-and-white’s the thing. It communi- cates less visual information than color film and at the same time involves us more deeply in the plot, the dialogue, and the psychology of the experience as opposed to the spec- tacle. Until 1952 black-and-white was the standard and color was reserved for special projects like epics and musicals.

or a long time my Number One favorite film, one that I Fwould watch every time it turned up on TV and that’s in my own VHS collection, was Notorious, the 1949 version Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Not a wasted frame in it—no lengthy scene-setting shots merely to fill up time. ing of him. In the last few minutes, we are again back at the Grant works as an undercover agent for an unnamed US cemetery and Valli is again walking down that dreary road. ribly dated. Was it ever really like that? The nostalgia is security agency. He recruits Bergman for a job in Rio and Cotton waits for her in the foreground, but she walks right overwhelming. they fall in love. The agency thinks it expedient for Berg- past him (and us) and out of the frame to the right. He lights Once Technicolor had completed its seduction of movie- man to marry Claude Rains in order to get into his house and up a cigarette. What an ending. There’s no period, just the makers and moviegoers, black-and-white films were rarely discover what dastardly shenanigans he and his Teutonic- beginning of another sentence. made—but those few are stand-outs: Raging Bull, Manhat- accented colleagues are up to. The wine cellar sequence is The cinematography is much different from the tight tan, Schindler’s List. The old movies belong to a long-ago the tensest I’ve ever seen and it works its magic on me every shots and rapid cutting we see today. In The Third Man era of film-making, considered slightly advanced from the time. Oh-oh, Cary, be careful, you’re going to knock over long shots prevail and linger. There are few quick cuts but silents but hopelessly pedestrian compared to the reality of that wine bott . . . Yikes! Get outta there! many Dutch angles—the use of a tilted camera giving an color, wide screens, and ever-increasing special effects. I The film ends not with the lovers’ embrace, but with off-balance feeling. Valli’s walk down the road takes several have yet to see last year’s Oscar-winning film The Artist, Rains walking back into the house to meet his fate. Just minutes, and we watch her walk the whole way. We wait for but it’s on my list. I’m interested to see if it employs the what that fate is and what happens to Cary and Ingrid isn’t the cut to a close-up, but it doesn’t come. black-and-white value scale as effectively as my favorite old spelled out for us, it’s left to our imagination, which fills in Trevor Howard plays Major Calloway, the hard-bitten movies did—the way the submarine prowled in the night, things to our satisfaction. military officer, cynical, seen-it-all. He’s the thread that ties the way your eyes were riveted to her face. Lately, The Third Man has edged out Notorious. Again, all the other characters together. A few weeks ago the Turner no wasted frames. The screenplay is tight, all the characters Classic Movies channel featured an evening of Trevor How- are well developed, even minor ones like Trevor Howard’s ard and I got a chance to see him in two radically different ADC Payne, who has a penchant for reading pulp fiction and roles. The night opened with The Third Man and it was hard Jane Merryman, a retired librarian living in Petaluma, con- is extremely polite as he socks you in the face. to imagine this actor playing any other kind of character. I tributes often to the RCR. Page 6 The Redwood Coast Review Winter 2013 star from page 1 restrial robot taken by another robot, both would traverse space tion Officer Catharine Conley, responsiblefor more than 150 million miles away. essentially un-attenu- protecting Mars from contamination, until it Among the multitude of remarkable ated. But what kind of was too late to make changes. It is unlikely, images from the Hubble Space Telescope antenna could capture though not impossible, that the bit will are those of deep space. Point at a small such signals? contact water, which could allow organisms spot in the sky that appears largely empty Advances in to grow. A spokesman for the Planetary to ground-based telescopes, take many astronomy and inter- Society said, “So wouldn’t it be tragic if national cooperation exposures over a period of several days, some future expedition were to discover life have been remarkable on Mars only to discover later that it had and voila, an astounding number of galax- in the 251 years since ies appear. In 2004 the Hubble Ultra Deep that first worldwide actually discovered life from Earth?” Field shot, a million-second-long exposure, observation of the Venus So far, things are going well in planning showed about 10,000 galaxies, believed to transit, but there have for the latest multinational mega-project, be the first to emerge shortly after the Big been rocky patches and the Square Kilometer Array, the world’s Bang. monumental screwups. biggest, most sensitive radio telescope. It’s In the eighteenth century, discover- The near-disastrous col- assigned to explore how the first galaxies ies could readily be made with the newly Hubble laboration between the formed, the nature of gravity and how dark invented telescope—there was a lot of low- Russian and American energy is accelerating the expansion of the hanging fruit. Today, the fruit is not so low, are not too close and not too far from their space programs is described in the book universe. Scheduled to be operational in but new instruments and space probes have star, within the “habitable zone,” where Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir 2024, it will connect 3000 separate radio a long reach. Close to home, the eight other liquid water could exist on an Earth-like (Harper Collins, 1998). American astronaut dishes, each about 50 feet wide, scattered planets keep surprising us. Wait, make that planet, and where astrobiologists can look Jerry Linenger was aboard the dilapidated, about Australia and South Africa. The seven. In 2006 the International Astronomi- for clues to possible life. Just as light from 11-year-old Russian space station in 1997 “square kilometer” refers to the total area cal Union decided that Pluto didn’t meet the Sun reaching Earth dims a little when when a malfunctioning oxygen generator of the collecting surfaces. The nerve center the criterion for being a planet—that it must Mercury and Venus transit, so also does caused a fire and toxic smoke. There were will be Britain’s Jodrell Bank Observatory, “clear the neighborhood” around its orbit, the light from a distant star dim when an other hair-raising incidents aboard MIR, founded by Sir Bernard Lovell, a vision- i.e., be the gravitationally dominant guy. exoplanet passes across the line of sight. including a collision with a resupply cargo ary who built a groundbreaking steerable It is now a “dwarf planet.” This insult fol- This dimming effect is one of the primary ship. radio telescope after World War II using lowed previous indignities: its name, after means used to discover exoplanets. The Ke- The mistake in grinding the Hubble scrounged parts from two naval gun turrets. the god of the underworld in Greek and pler Mission telescope constantly observes Space Telescope mirror was a whopper. Its The London Daily Mail referred to that Roman mythology, had been suggested by 156,000 stars. Of the more than 2000 plan- inability to focus properly was only discov- telescope as a “giant begging bowl held out ered once in orbit. Three years later a crew an 11-year- old girl; she was familiar with ets thus far netted, many are Earth-sized. A to collect knowledge.” Lovell died this past on the Space Shuttle Endeavour installed the other planets and “just thought that was August at age 98. recent Kepler discovery would make good corrective optics. I take issue with the value a name that hadn’t been used.” Flybys of the The model of “reality” that our brain Star Wars material: a binary star system (the of some NASA programs, but bravo for the planets reveal them to be enigmatic enough two stars circle each other every seven days) Shuttle. creates is personal and, hopefully, congruent to rate a recent article headline in Science with two planets circling the two-star unit. with what’s actually out there. The model of magazine: “Why Is the Solar System So One makes the circuit every 50 days, the he successful August Curiosity land- the cosmos that science creates is generally Bizarre?” But it is their moons—at least other takes 303 days. Ting on Mars was universally hailed as accepted as real; it’s practical, powerful and 106 discovered so far—that startle us the Projects like SETI (Search for Extra- an incredible feat. But there is a potential testable for validity. However, the latest pro- most. They are a wacky menagerie, each terrestrial Intelligence) take a different problem: there might be an unsterilized posed model of the universe is string theory. with distinct features, such as Saturn’s approach. They look for radio signals. The drill bit on board. Before launch, engineers It seems not to be testable, so the question Titan with lakes of methane and Neptune’s problem is that radio waves gradually lose decided that the landing’s jarring impact has been asked, “Is it science or philoso- Triton, orbiting backwards compared with intensity as they travel through interstellar could disable the robotic drill-bit inserter, phy?” Perhaps we are reaching beyond what the planet’s rotation, and spewing geysers of dust. A recent suggestion is that extraterres- so they opened the drill bit box, containing we can know, but I doubt it. While the nitrogen. trials would have avoided this limitation by previously sterilized bits, and installed a bit cosmologists argue, I plan to sit back and The search for planets beyond the solar transmitting signals using a stream of neu- to ensure that at least one would be usable. enjoy the data that Curiosity streams to us system—exoplanets, those circling stars trinos, those sneaky subatomic particles that In the process the bit may have become from Mars. in our own Milky Way galaxy—is getting interact sparingly with matter (most pass contaminated with Earth microbes. The event was not reported to Planetary Protec- into high gear. The quest? Find those that through earth unhindered) and therefore Stephen Bakalyar lives in Sonoma. Winter 2013 The Redwood Coast Review Page 7 B i b l i o t e c a News, Views, Notes, Reviews, Reports and Exhortations from Friends of Coast Community Library

Fionna Perkins, 1919-2012 library lines A Work in Progress Julia Larke

ionna Perkins, a founder of Coast Community Library, recently passed Faway. She seemed indomitable and with her affirmative energy was able to inspire local residents, along with eight co-founders, to create a free public library on the South Coast. From its humble begin- nings in the rear of the social hall of a local church to the lovely public library in the re- modeled Gillmore Building of today, Coast Community Library is a wonderful contri- bution to the community. Not only do local people benefit, from Stewart’s Point to Elk, m Nelso n Pa

Bi ll Perry but patrons in other libraries in Mendocino County and in Lake and Sonoma Counties also benefit because the collection is shared. When there was discussion about what type of library was needed on the coast, The Godmother Fionna held out for a free public library. She remembered when she was young, in Depression times, that her local public ionna Perkins, whose fifty years library had “opened the world.” Fionna This wasn’t exactly my idea of a brilliant on the Redwood Coast were and friends began recruitment for a Friends Despite the sometimes career move. I was already engaged in a defined by her passion for poetry, of the Library that was yet to be and on number of writing and translation projects, democracy and community, died November 5, 1989, the first public library tribal identities adopt- and editing a library newsletter was not at her home on Gypsy Flat Road on the South Coast opened its doors. Since among my ambitions. But it occurred to Fon November 29 after a long fight, not with ed by residents of cer- then, the Friends have supported and me that by partnering with the Independent any particular illness but with time itself. cherished the library, by volunteering and Coast Observer we could wrap the library She was 93. With her husband, Richard, tain regional enclaves, through donations of money and books and news in a literary supplement and that who left this world year before last, Fionna other items. With the passage of Measure Fionna and Richard everyone would benefit—the library, the was a cultural pioneer and community A and continuing support of Friends and Friends, the ICO, the readers and the writ- builder in founding institutions of arts and consciously main- volunteers, the library is thriving. Fionna’s ers—and that I might actually enjoy the job. letters from Gualala to Mendocino. In ad- story of the founding of the library was And thus was hatched The Redwood Coast dition to helping launch the Mendocino and tained a strong sense published in The Redwood Coast Review, Review, now entering its fifteenth year, Gualala Arts centers and promoting poetry Summer 1999, and it is also available on the of connection with whose godmother was and remains Fionna and poets through various reading series, Friend’s Web site at www.coastcommunity- Perkins. As I told her recently, this paper workshops and grassroots publications, denizens of the whole library.org has proved to be one of the most fulfilling probably her proudest accomplishment was Fionna and Richard Perkins had a large projects of my life, and I have her to thank being part of the small group of visionar- Sonoma–Mendocino personal library and Fionna has donated for talking me into it. There are many other ies who in 1989 collected a few boxes of much of her collection, including poetry and Coast from Jenner to writers, artists and activists in Mendocino donated books to start Coast Community local history books, to Coast Community County with similar tales of Fionna’s inspi- Library. Fort Bragg. Library. A plan is in the works to create a rational encouragement. In one of our last conversations Fionna memorial plaque identifying the Perkins’ Parallel to the growth of the RCR as a told me that the library’s name was intended collection and thanking them for their quarterly section of the ICO, the Friends to embrace the entire coastal community, inspiring contribution to the library and to ing our respective commitments to that less were busy raising money to purchase and including but not limited to the distinctively the community. than popular art, we immediately began build a new home for the library. When the countercultural city of Point Arena where it The library has experienced a rise in visi- a friendship that lasted more than twenty Point Arena Mercantile building (Gill- was located. Despite the sometimes tribal tors from all over the world and I think it is years. By 1997 she had recruited me to join more’s General Store) came up for sale, we identities adopted by residents of certain because of the international library symbol the board of directors of Friends of Coast jumped on it, Richard drew up plans for the regional enclaves, Fionna and Richard sign on the front of the building and the Community Library, where as a member renovation and before long, with enormous consciously maintained a strongly ecumeni- fact that people know that public libraries of the book committee I sorted through volunteer effort, we had a new building, our cal sense of connection with denizens of provide free Internet access. Especially dur- boxes of donations in search of gems for the current splendid facility, the most welcom- the whole Sonoma–Mendocino Coast from ing the summer, European bicyclists touring collection. The following year, at a board ing and democratic cultural institution in Jenner to Fort Bragg. Her designation by the Pacific Northwest coastline drop in, and meeting, one item on the agenda was a these parts, run by a constantly growing the Point Arena City Council several years others, such as the honeymoon couple from makeover for the Friends newsletter, which team of volunteers and free for the use of ago as that municipality’s “poet laureate for New Zealand, stop in because they like to at the time was a rather haphazardly as- everyone from preschool story-hungry tod- life” (despite the fact that Gypsy Flat is a visit small libraries wherever they travel. sembled two or three sheets of paper sent to dlers to teenagers in search of an Internet Gualala postal address) led us to joke that in Recently, an ancestor of one of the fifteen about fifty members. By now familiar with connection to retired seniors researching order to be spared the ceremonial duties of fishermen from Yawatahama, Japan, who my history as an editor of various publica- whatever interests them. Coast Community poet laureate—riding in the Fourth of July landed at Point Arena in a wooden fishing tions, Fionna nominated me to take on the Library is without doubt Fionna’s most en- parade, composing poems for special occa- boat in 1912, came in with his wife and they upgrade of the newsletter. during legacy, a creation that keeps evolving sions and reading them in public—her only were pleased to see the beautiful replica of to meet the needs of the local population, escape was to expire. And so she has at last the boat on display in the library. Jeff Watts while its offshoot the RCR continues to laid down her laurels. created a world map bulletin board for extend the reach of its creative ripples well Born in Montana and raised in Idaho, visitors to pin where they’re from and after beyond the Redwood Coast. Washington and Oregon, Fionna (under the only a few months there are clusters of pins So, through her poetry, her many lasting byline Lois Thomas) worked for the San dotting the map. September Palette friendships, her activism for peace and Francisco News as a reporter during and The library’s collection is being weeded women’s rights, her cultural institution after World War II, marrying Richard, who and new items are being added. I’m de- Stark and lonely building, her stalwart support for other was a sailor at the time, and eventually veloping the adult collection in local and the leaning sheds creative workers, her powerful personal- settling in Marin. The two discovered their regional history and also adding natural his- moss-edged fences ity, her tough perseverance and love of life spot at Gypsy Flat during a trip to Mendoci- tory titles. The children’s and young adult here in the roll of hills right down to her final days, Fionna Perkins no in 1962 and settled there for the duration, Librarian, Elizabeth Kalen, has also been at first rain so quickly green has left an indelible mark on those lucky naming their homestead, she told me, to ordering new items. She hosted a young as soon gone to gold enough to have known her—and for those indicate the end of both their earlier wander- writer’s workshop in November for National who never had the pleasure, all they need do ings. Richard established his practice as Novel Writing Month and is planning a and there is to visit the library, which is the realization one of the most prolific local architects and graphic-novel discussion group. Look for the wide, wide sea of her vision. Students of Redwood Coast Fionna abandoned journalism for the more her update on children’s and young adult curtained in mists natural or cultural history will soon be able elusive pursuit of a fiction writer’s life. programming in the next issue. Marilyn that hang like still smoke to make use of the trove of books from her After finishing several novels, all unpub- Alderson, who has curated the children’s personal collection bequeathed to the library lished, she focused on verse and eventually, material for many years, continues to make gray, green and gold for their benefit. in 2000, thanks to Barbara Baer’s Floreant it a gem of a children’s collection. In fact, the colors of home ground We won’t forget you, Fionna. Press in Forestville, brought out her locally Coast Community Library is a treasure, free best-selling collection of poems, The Horse to the public. Thank you, Fionna and all the —Stephen Kessler Orchard. —Fionna Perkins founders, and all of the people who continue I met Fionna at a poetry reading when I to support their library. first landed on the coast in 1992. Recogniz- Page 8 The Redwood Coast Review Winter 2013 books The Gift to Be Simple Erin Schey

A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance by Andy Couturier This is no change- Stone Bridge Press (2010), 315 pages your-lightbulb kind of

rom the moment I took this book into pseudo-ecospiritual hand, there was a tangible, curious fluff. Couturier has Fquality about its form and shape. It had that “something different.” The unusu- crafted a philosophi- al horizontal layout, hand-drawn maps and sketches and carefully placed photographs, cal opus, an essential gave me the feeling I was opening an old read for the everyday tome, a carefully assembled journal kept for many years. Now worn and water damaged person seeking an from my less-than-careful rereading of it over the last two years, Andy Couturier’s A authentic, sustainable Different Kind of Luxury holds a prominent and creative life. place in my desktop sustainability library. Snug right up next to Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and E. F. Schumach- Andy Couturier, right, with Akira Ito er’s Small is Beautiful, this book holds its own as a mainstay of spiritual and practical Interspersed with insightful and vivid opus, an essential read for the everyday rural Japan. We learn how Osamu Nakamu- insight for those dark nights of “will we anecdotes describing the homes, interview person seeking an authentic, sustainable and ra collects his own firewood, stacks it with ever get there?” despair over the current settings and relationships with the author, creative life. artistic care and lives and cooks by the heat global human situation. every chapter reveals a narrative of each Through an excellent design choice, of the traditional Japanese irori hearth. We Barely escaping the slightly guilty person’s history, philosophy, spiritual beliefs Couturier gives the reader a generous full- discover how Koichi Yamashita grows all and overwhelmingly curious feeling that and current way of life. Couturier gives a color photomontage of each individual at his own rice, wheat, millet and vegetables I was actually reading someone’s diary, I lucid voice to these eleven Japanese lives, the front of the book. By using a number of with hand tools and a wooden waterwheel. devoured Couturier’s book in just under representative of not only modern Japanese titles to describe the interviewees, the author We follow Gufu Watanabe through his for- a day. Despite the author’s request in the counterculture, but more broadly of an communicates a respect for the true com- est garden of rare edible herbs and trees as Introduction to digest each story slowly, emerging global response in both hemi- plexity and diversity of each person. The he gathers ingredients for dinner along the ruminating over the chapters to get a sense spheres to the multitasking material mad- reader meets Wakako Oe, organic farming way. However the real juice of this book of this “slowed down life,” I found myself ness of mainstream consumer culture. As mentor, puppet carver, intuitive painter, bo- comes from the startling new perspectives gorging on the realness and sincerity of this each story unfolds he probes with humility, tanic sculptor and calligrapher. The author and values infused throughout each person’s book. Here were eleven accounts of real gentility and sensitivity into each individ- also introduces us to San Oizumi, potter, lived story: “Don’t spend. Do. Not. Spend.” people living satisfying, affordable lives in ual’s thoughts on the very fundamentals of anti-nuclear organizer, anarchist, commu- “Convenience just speeds you up.” “Sat- a sustainable relationship with nature. This human life: time, money, work, art, music, nity educator and father. Each story has isfaction is happiness.” “Going over here, is a true feast for the reader searching for food and family. But this is no change- inherent appeal purely based on the unique going over there. Tiring! Better to just laze actual evidence of sustainable living amidst your-lightbulb kind of pseudo-ecospiritual methods each person uses to create their around the house.” These are certainly not an eco-haze of green-washed capitalism. fluff. Couturier has crafted a philosophical home and provide for their material needs in

Some Recent Arrivals @ Coast Community Library

FICTION Dobbins, Peter Y. Point Arena, CA BIOGRAPHY Van Meter, Jen. Hopeless Savages great- Chabon, Michael. Telegraph Avenue Durston, Tammy. Legendary locals of the Masters, Jarvis. That bird has my wings: est hits 2000-2010 Cornwell, Patricia. The bone bed Mendonomo coast, California the autobiography of an innocent man on Yumi, Kiiro. Library war: love & war. Erdrich, Louise. The round house Egan, Timothy. Short nights of the Shadow death row Vol. 1-3 Grisham, John. The racketeer Catcher: the epic life and immortal pho- Peltier, Leonard. Prison writings: my life is Ifland, Alta. Death-in-a-box tographs of Edward Curtis my sun dance JUVENILE ITEMS Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight behav- Green, Connie. The wild table: seasonal Talley, André. A.L.T. : a memoir EASY BOOKS ior: a novel foraged food and recipes Barrett, Judi. Animals should definitely Leon, Donna. The jewels of para- Homans, John. What’s a dog for?: the sur- DVDs not wear clothing dise prising history, science, philosophy, and California’s lost tribes Brett, Jan. Mossy Mankell, Henning. The shadow girls politics of man’s best friend Legacy of the Nisei: stories of Japanese Fox, Mem. Diez deditos de las manos Maron, Margaret. The buzzard table Kahn, Lloyd. Tiny homes: simple shelter: American internment and World War II y diez deditos de los pies = Ten little McCall Smith, Alexander. The scaling back in the 21st century The elegant universe fingers uncommon appeal of clouds Levene, Gail. Mendocino Coast cooking War of the worlds Kimmel, Eric A. Hershel and the Ha- McEwan, Ian. Sweet tooth Lynas, Mark. Six degrees: our future on a Whale rider nukkah goblins Muller, Marcia. Looking for yes- hotter planet Lies, Brian. Bats at the ballgame terday McGuire, Bill. Waking the giant: how a YOUNG ADULT ITEMS Soman, David. Ladybug Girl and Bingo Rowland, Laura Joh. The incense changing climate triggers earthquakes, YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION Stainton, Sue. The lighthouse cat game tsunamis, Freedman, Russell. The war to end all Uegaki, Chieri. Suki’s kimono Shapiro, Barbara A. The art forger Mooney, Maggie. Are you ready?: how to wars: World War I Wilson, Karma. Bear says thanks prepare for an earthquake Levinson, Cynthia. We’ve got a job: the NONFICTION Pernick, Ron. Clean tech nation: how the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March JUVENILE NONFICTION Clark, Susan M. The Sea Ranch U.S. can lead in the new global economy Marrin, Albert. Flesh & blood so cheap: Glenday, Craig. Guinness World Re- Clifton, Lucille. The collected po- Phan, Charles. Vietnamese home cooking the Triangle fire and its legacy cords 2013 ems of Lucille Clifton Pickart, Andrea J. Ecology and restoration Walker, Sally M. Blizzard of glass: the Hines, Anna Grossnickle. Pieces: a year Colbert, Stephen. America again: of Northern California coastal dunes Halifax explosion of 1917 in poems & quilts re-becoming the greatness we Schlosser, S. E. Spooky California: tales Margles, Samantha. Mythbusters science never weren’t of hauntings, strange happenings, and YOUNG ADULT FICTION fair book other local lore Bradbury, Jennifer. Wrapped Softich, Cheryl. The short and noble life of Cashore, Kristin. Bitterblue JUVENILE FICTION Specialist Noah Charles Pierce Condie, Ally. Reached Bachmann, Stefan. The Peculiar Library Hours Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: from lost to found on McGarry, Katie. Pushing the limits Bruel, Nick. Bad Kitty for president the Pacific Crest Trail McQuerry, Maureen. The Peculiars Colfer, Chris. The land of stories: the wishing spell Monday 12 noon - 6 pm Stringer, Chris. Lone survivors: how we Stiefvater, Maggie. The Raven Boys came to be the only humans on earth Meloy, Colin. Under Wildwood Tuesday 10am - 6 pm Valente, Catherynne M. The girl who fell Tahja, Katy M. Early Mendocino Coast Riordan, Rick. The mark of Athena Wednesday 10am - 8 pm beneath Fairyland and led the revels Terkel, Studs. Will the circle be unbroken?: there Snicket, Lemony. Who could that be at Thursday 12 noon - 8 pm reflections on death, rebirth, and hunger Wein, Elizabeth. Code name Verity this hour? Friday 12 noon - 6 pm Thomas, Irene D. Olaf Palm: a life in art Westerfeld, Scott. The manual of aeronau- Stephens, John. The fire chronicle Saturday 12 noon - 3 pm Thompson, Jerry. Cascadia’s fault: the tic : an illustrated guide to the Leviathan earthquake and tsunami that could dev- series JUVENILE BOOK ON CD Coast Community Library astate North America Riordan, Rick. The Kane chronicles - is located at Wilson, Edward O. The social conquest of YOUNG ADULT GRAPHIC NOVELS The red pyramid, The throne of fire, 225 Main Street earth Arakawa, Hiromu. Fullmetal alchemist. The serpent’s shadow Point Arena Wilson, Nicholas. Mendocino in the seven- Vol. 1-27 Stephens, John. The emerald atlas (707) 882-3114 ties Emura. W Juliet. Vol. 1-14 Winter 2013 The Redwood Coast Review Page 9 the axioms I was spoon-fed growing up in which any aspiring “think global, act local” the States! citizen can adopt. Many of these folks present an organic Yet however intense and possibly fiction understanding of their own relationship to unachievable these examples may seem to and values regarding the natural world (an some readers, they deliver an empower- understanding which many westerners are ing example of our ability, or even our Dreamers only now discovering through the modern responsibility, to reclaim two of the most ainbow ordered a hamburger when he was seated at a table next to the permaculture and sustainability move- important aspects of our own humanity: Rpole dancer. He had a face like an old, seamed baseball glove, and he was ments). This book left me intensely curious time and simplicity. Even I, the committed called Rainbow because he was always dreaming of the big strike he’d make. as to the diversity of living examples of permaculture designer, organic farmer and A woman who was in her mid-forties asked if she could join him and he resilient modern life that Japanese com- sustainability educator, was shaken by the nodded. He spent a lot of time prospecting and welcomed company. munities and individuals may provide to almost alarming directness of the questions There were several television sets placed around The Wild Horse Saloon, the rest of the world. As a nation with a raised in this book. Self-sufficent farmer, and they all showed naked women in various poses. There was a brothel in the living memory of both urban and rural batik fabric artist, mother and author/illus- back room. sustainable culture (Edo Period Tokyo was trator Asha Amemiya asks, “First, you have “You don’t look like a whore,” Rainbow said. He could have done without a fully regenerative and sustainable city of to think, does it involve money or not? Then the television sets, but no place was perfect. over one million people), Japan may offer you look at whether it is natural or not. That Someone his age was sitting on a couch in the far corner with a blonde. the most relevant examples of how over- and whether it causes suffering and pain to “What does a whore look like?” developed nations can begin post-industrial, others . . . or not.” With an unapologetic “I don’t know. Someone blond. Younger.” post-carbon renewal. Certainly, Couturier’s precision, these kinds of questions cut “You look exactly what I imagined an old prospector would look like. Gray work moves us in a new direction and is not directly through to the core of the spiritual- hair. A shaggy beard. When was the last time you went to a barber?” just a call to revert to some traditional ideal. cultural dissatisfaction of the modern grind Roxie, the pole dancer, was middle-aged, too, and probably weighed twenty As Astuko Watanabe, one of the interview- and bring us back to daily commitment to pounds more than she had in her prime. Everyone was getting old. ees, asserts, “I am not a traditional person. I taking it slow and simple. Rainbow didn’t like it, but you either got old or died. There was nothing am just a woman living a simple life in the Couturier has opened a portal for you could do about it, except follow your dream. He’d had an expensive home mountains. That’s all.” English-language readers (and hopefully in Reno, a wife and two kids, but he was suffocated. One day he just left. I wonder how the “extreme” living Japanese readers too, as the translation is “What were your dreams,” Rainbow asked, “or did you have any?” conditions of many of the people featured now finished) to look openly at the lives of “I was a CPA in Provo, married to a Mormon who thought he had to tell me in this book might present an unattainable eleven people living an authentic experi- when I could go to the bathroom, so I just left one day. My given name was or even undesirable example of sustainable ment with what it really means to be human. Alexandra, but I changed it to Heather Angel when I moved here. You can be life for many Japanese and American read- At the most fundamental level, this book anything you want in Nevada, but Utah’s repressive. It’s filled with Mormons, ers. The remote rural settings and lack of explores the human relationship with the and it must have the most stupid liquor laws in the nation. You have to buy all modern “amenities” in the houses of those idea of “satisfaction” and our experience your liquor at a state store, and if you want a drink with dinner you have to buy interviewed for this book may cause some with “enough.” These seemingly radical one of those little bottles you’d get on an airplane and take it into the restau- sustainability-curious readers to write off ways of life and points of view are not just rant. Then you have to sit in the back of the place and order a glass of water, these people as radical back-to-the-landers. a fringe response to the modern rush and like you’re fooling people. Although some people featured, like Atsuko grind. They are a clear path laid out for “I didn’t dream I’d be a whore, but it’s not a bad life. The owners treat you Watanabe, are actively involved in their anyone to follow. When we live with less, like you’re a person.” local community, more examples of people we can reclaim the time we need to respect “My given name was Owen Harrison Harding,” Rainbow said, “but I living in community may have helped the and creatively reuse the abundant resources changed it when I bought a mule and some mining equipment. author create a larger and more complete all around us. Feeling overwhelmed? Feel- “I just came back from Tonopah,” Rainbow said. “I was looking for gold at picture of simple and sustainable living ing tired? Feeling busy? This book reminds the Goose Chase Mine, but the place was aptly named. options in Japan. Hopefully readers will us we are in control. We are the ones “Jack Dempsey and Wyatt Earp hung out in Tonopah at different times, look deeper to the insightful ways in which responsible for reclaiming the real luxuries but the biggest hotel there, The Mizpah, is shut now, and the town’s dying. I Couturier connects the choices of these of time, nature and simplicity. A life lived in don’t think I’ll go back there. We’re close enough to death without being in a individuals to larger patterns and values, voluntary simplicity may be the very thing dying town. Sometimes I think I keep moving so I can defeat death, like the that leads to true luxury. Winchester lady tried to do, but I know that’s impossible.” “Most things are,” Angel said, “but we have to keep trying.” She lit a cigarette and exhaled. You were allowed to smoke in casinos Erin Schey is a permaculture designer and and brothels, but things were closing in. Voters had decided people in bars sustainability educator based in upstate shouldn’t be allowed to smoke, but the legislators had overturned the vote in WRITE TO US New York. Andy Couturier will be reading, a year or so. She understood why some people thought voting was a waste of showing slides, and serving tea at the Asian time. The RCR welcomes your letters. Art Museum in San Francisco Sunday, Janu- They were quiet for a while when Rainbow’s hamburger came. He drank a ary 13, at 2pm. Coors with it and bought Angel a glass of Chardonnay. Write to the Editor, RCR c/o When he’d finished the burger, he looked around the room. It was one of ICO, PO Box 1200, Gualala, the last free places left in America, but it was changing. Rainbow said, “Pretty soon they’ll arrest people for dreaming. There’ll be a CA 95445 or by email to Correction Due to a technical error the credit was dropped, in our print edition, law against it.” [email protected]. from the illustration on page 10 of our Fall “It wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Angel said. issue. The painting was by Kay Bradner.

—Arthur Winfield Knight knight from page 2 S U B S C R I B E If you live beyond the Redwood Coast and don’t get the Independent Coast Observer, now you can subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review and not miss an issue of our award-winning mix of essays, reviews, poetry, fiction and graphic art. For $24 a year you will be guaranteed quarterly first-class de- livery of the RCR and at the same time support Coast Community Library in its ongoing operating expenses. Please use this coupon to subscribe or renew now. You won’t be disappointed.

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Arthur and Kit Knight in Sacramento, 2005 I am making an additional donation to the library in the amount of $______. even back east he couldn’t escape Califor- Updike, associations with James Dean—and nia. On retirement in 1993 he and his wife I admired the economy of his tales, his Kit returned to the North Bay where he reduction of the Hemingway model down Total enclosed $______wrote movie reviews for the Anderson Val- to an even simpler understatement, with a ley Advertiser in between whatever else he tenderness of tone replacing the master’s was writing. Then they moved to Sacra- machismo. One can feel his compassion for Name ______mento before landing in Yerington about six his characters in novels like Blue Skies Fall- years ago. ing, Blue Moon Rising and Misfit Country. Address ______Knight was one of those writers I met in Knight had heart. person only once but our paths crossed in And he had the courage to go his own print over many years publishing in some of way as a writer, cultivating into his final City, State, ZiP ______the same obscure journals, and eventually years an increasingly clean voice as a story- we started corresponding and trading books. teller exploring the back roads and saloons Though our styles and affinities were dif- and little towns of his region and catching ferent, we had some things in common—a on paper a taste of their intimate lives. Copy or clip this coupon and send, with check or money order, to Coast connection with Sam Peckinpah, apprecia- Community Library, PO Box 808, Point Arena, CA 95468. Thank You! tion of Charles Bukowski, aversion to John —SK Page 10 The Redwood Coast Review Winter 2013 BERTRAND from page 1

Americans. Bertrand works hard, studying time manage- ment and negotiating skills, the better to compete with male colleagues for management positions. She takes bold steps attempting to succeed in a man’s world—pushing herself to stand up and speak in work meetings, spreading her arms to take up more space (and claim more status), dressing smartly, and––knowing that men tend to share information in social situations––playing tennis with male colleagues. Year by year, she struggles up the Navy’s organizational ladder, eventually qualifying for government service positions at a high level (GS-14), but she often has to fight for architec- tural jobs that invariably go to men. After being turned down for one job, citing discrimina- tion she appeals the Navy’s decision, without success, and suffers reprisals as a result. She writes, “While I was busy holding off the discrimination I perceived above the wa- terline, the full masculinity of architecture lay out of sight, hidden like the underwater depths of an iceberg.” By most measures, however, Bertrand has extraordinary success in the male-dominated Navy. Early on, she handles herself with aplomb as the only woman architect on a panel awarding government projects. When one firm wedges images of sexy women in bathing suits in among their presentation slides, the firm’s principal approaches her afterward to apologize. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and she replies, “I hope not.” Her keen eye notes the now-antiquated social behav- iors at meetings of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), with its “constant drip of mini-comments from the old guard about being female.” Wendy Bertrand at her Gasquet summerhouse . . .

verseeing building projects, Bertrand is able to influ- Oence design on some large projects (making sure, for “Buildings form the social stamp example, that all government offices in her portfolio had windows). As Bertrand’s illustrations and photographs of their time. Like judges setting show, one of her many projects, San Diego’s Marine Corps precedents with their decisions Recruit Depot, has a California Mission architectural style with handsome red tile roofs, as well as parks and paths that from the bench, we architects create a campus-like feel. Professional organizations are her “shortcuts for learning professional and organizational mark the land with our struc- skills,” and she makes skillful use of them, serving on the tures.” board of Society of American Military Engineers (SAME), —Wendy Bertrand a less stuffy, more open-minded group than the white, male elitist American Institute of Architects. “was flaking away like the old paint on my house before its Bertrand’s career takes off. While her romantic involve- make-over.” ments are problematic, she excels at management, whether it Two-thirds of the way through Enamored with Place, I is a major architectural project for the Navy or joining work- felt nothing but admiration for Wendy Bertrand’s spunk as men to retile the shower in her maisonette. Bertrand knows a trailblazer for Bay Area women architects and as a leader this, noting, “Working well together productively is one of in boosting awareness of the social and human implications the true and universal pleasures of living.” Understanding of the built environment. Apart from my annoyance with her . . . and at the École des Beaux Arts, Montpellier, France employees differs from empathy in intimate relationships, overuse of acronyms, I found myself wishing more stalwart, and it is in intimate relationships that Bertrand’s take-charge more-or-less ordinary people like Bertrand wrote memoirs attitude—the very thing that carried her forward in her to counterbalance the current flood of “Poor Me” tales. This loses her sense of perspective. What mother, where her chil- career—sometimes worked against her. She seems to pay impression is dispelled only briefly in the last third of the dren are concerned, does not? a high price for years of working in an intensely competi- book, when the various strands of Bertrand’s personal life, tive mostly male environment, as her intimate relation- particularly her relationship with her daughter, begin to ven when there are setbacks, however, Bertrand moves ships, while satisfying, are not lasting; one romance after unravel. Eforward, finding meaning and satisfaction. Her daugh- another––typically with much younger men––unwinds in Bertrand raises her daughter without financial or other ter eventually becomes independent and marries; Bertrand two years or so. “My love life,” she writes expressively, assistance from her father, who apart from occasional stints becomes the manager of the new Architectural Branch of the on the West Coast as a ski coach, Navy Public Works Center in Oakland. Bertrand’s consistent remains in France. (Bertrand interest in progressive management means she acknowledg- wisely declines his invitation to es her subordinates’ participation in what would otherwise live with him and his mistress be a faceless bureaucracy. A good manager, interested in the there.) Enamored is in part a social professional development of subordinates, she arranges for history of an era when women weekly staff meetings––unusual at the time––and expects Not Easy to Give Up a Stetson like Bertrand, bereft of adequate people to participate, just as in 1977 she had organized childcare options, struggled to care “Priorities Ahead” to give younger architects a forum for for their children while holding presenting their ideas. She goes above and beyond the call of Grass knee high onto gains in the workplace and in duty at work, but after six years recognizes that somewhere under the apple trees their careers. Bertrand’s daughter along the line she has lost her sense of fun. “Perhaps my and out from my window has much the same kind of 1950s sense of humor had been quieted from many battles for in- has gone to seed in the meadow upbringing Bertrand herself had clusion.” Work is lonely with no other managers to socialize where the four grazed, a field now growing up in La Jolla. Bertrand, with. She knits at her desk. of willowy stick people, heads too, was a latchkey child, at a time Completing a prestigious executive training program, bobbing in every breeze, when single motherhood in the which qualifies her for GS-14 positions, she can no longer dancing wild at a sudden gust. white middle class was rare. Was tolerate the baldly discriminatory attitudes around her, and there an unacknowledged price in the end takes a lateral move to the Forest Service. Her Where I walk mornings paid for all that freedom––freedom love of architecture and lived spaces is undiminished, but patches have already flattened to travel around the world on her her desire to live in a man’s world is extinguished. She joins and dried ashy blond, the color own before finishing college, when the Bay Area Knitting and Crochet Guild, and takes up fiber of the chestnut pony’s uncut mane, with extraordinary independence arts, all the while continuing to be active in the Organiza- and what will I do with his the young Bertrand meets the tion of Women Architects, which she helped found in the and the manes of the other three Marxist who becomes her husband early 1970s. Bertrand writes: “Buildings are prominent in plastic bags on a shelf and father of her child, with never components of place; they impact appearance, character, in the utility room? Saved there so much as an introduction to her circulation, vistas, environmental health, resource use, and for my Indian friend who makes own family in the States? Still future options. But perhaps even more intriguing to me is jewelry of horsehair—if she barely out of her teens, Bertrand the way buildings form the social stamp of their time. Like ever returns. returns––alone––to California with judges setting precedents with their decisions from the her baby to take up her studies at bench, we architects mark the land with our structures.” It’s like that now, another exodus, UC Berkeley, and with unusual Bertrand is retired from civil service and now divides her friends leaving for new work or stamina graduates with honors in time between her beloved maisonette in San Francisco and more school, death taking its share, 1971 and the following year earns her equally beloved cottage in Gasquet in Northern Califor- and neighbors with health or age her Master’s degree. nia, where she has built a studio for her fiber art and exqui- problems who sell and depart, while Bertrand’s daughter, too, is site rug-making. Her book Rug Retrospective of Weaving we three, the man and I and one old pony, given a stable childhood, with con- Seasons 1999-2010, which displays her gorgeous rugs, is in cling to these acres of uncropped sistent, but moderate to minimum its fourth edition. fields and sagging fences involvement from Bertrand or her She is a woman of her time—how could she be oth- that were never truly a ranch grandmother, and very little from erwise? Though her energies were perhaps occasionally but more and more have the look her father. The world, however, diverted, first by the hedonism and extroversion of the 1970s of one about to be abandoned. was a very different place in the and 1980s, and then by the ambition of the 1990s, Bertrand 1970s, when the supporting culture admirably completed the professional and domestic renova- of towns and neighborhoods was tions she set out for herself, and on the way became an ac- complished and heroic twenty-first-century woman. —Fionna Perkins eroded. It is at this point, in her daughter’s teen years, that Bertrand

RCR regular Zara Raab lives in Berkeley.