Georgia gets “Georgia on My Mind.” Kentucky gets “My Old Kentucky Home.” Oklahoma gets “Oklahoma!”
With its insipid lyrics and unsingable melody, why do we Californians get saddled with “I Love You, California“?
I love you, California, you’re the greatest state of all.
I love you in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall.
I love your [...]
José de Gálvez, the ambitious and periodically loony visitador (a sort of inspector representing the Crown) of New Spain from 1764-1772, once considered importing 600 apes from Guatemala to quell an Indian uprising.
Sounds like a private simian security force to me, which got me thinking about the other animal adjectives I know — like [...]
Azariah Smith was nineteen years old when James Marshall discovered gold on the south fork of the American River. Smith, there with Marshall helping him build John Sutter’s mill, had only one thing on his mind once he saw the gold. It was the same thing he wanted before he saw it: to get to [...]
I hadn’t wanted it to happen, but it seems there’s no way to avoid it now, so I’m breaking this blog in two. You’ll find all of the entries related to the California show at Finding California. Everything else will remain here.
I’m doing this because I want to feel comfortable sending my son’s fourth-grade cohorts [...]
From a 1907 Sunkist advertising poem (via California’s Los Citrus Groves):
…If long life you would be having,
Knowing naught of human ills,
Daily eat at least one orange,
Brought from California’s groves.
So what we really needed all along was an orange a day to maintain distance from our physicians.
But it did get me curious about the origins [...]
Richard Henry Dana shipped from Boston to California in 1834. Back then, California was still part of Mexico; it was the era of the Californios and fandangos, of the hide and tallow trade, of sailing ships from all over the world and of the songs that came with them.
Dana’s account of his travels, TWO [...]
Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the California Missions, walked for months throughout baja and alta California on a swollen, infected leg. “But even though I die on the road,” he said, “I will not turn back.”
Of course, he didn’t say it in English, so I wanted to find the original Spanish. Californiahistory.net has [...]
After months and months and months and more months of “research” (i.e. watching episodes of my latest favorite television show, “Dead Like Me,” on DVD), I finally wrote something which might actually be useable.
I realized that, to get myself to write, I better simplify, simplify, simplify (thank you H.D. Thoreau). I decided to use the [...]
The History of California–History 370
At Cal Poly Pomona, with Professor Christopher Bates. It’s all here, soundtrack included. Thank you Dr. Bates.
Cost of the Iraq War
At the National Priorities Project, gives you not only the total cost to the United States but also the cost for cities and counties throughout the country. Thanks to The Obfuscation [...]
Today was my youngest son’s first day of fourth grade. I’m hoping to use him as inspiration for the California show I’m supposed to be writing (read: that I should have written years ago). He’ll be studying California history throughout the year, so here’s the plan: I study along with him and the show just [...]
