Carson Mansion

Carson Mansion, Eureka, CA. (Tommy photo)

There is a magnificent Victorian mansion on the waterfront of Eureka which is all wooden gingerbread. Called the Carson Mansion, it is presently off limits to all but members of an exclusive club made up, according to a local worker we met today at the at the Humboldt Historical Society, "of doctors and lawyers".

Here as everywhere in the USA. doctors and lawyers are the richest folks in town.

Since the old manse is decorated for the holidays, we drove by this evening to get an eyeful and I snapped the above photo.

Though we are not doctors or lawyers we hope to be inside some day soon.

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Don Pedrito

 Don Pedrito.

I read about Don Pedrito some years ago in a little booklet I found by accident in a public library. He was a a simple and humble Mexican Indian who lived in Texas more than a century ago who is still remembered for his ability to cure the sick--often using such common "medicines" as water.


He would accept no payment for his cures.


He seems quite a saintly character and, though I don't know much about him, he is one of my very favorite people.


Below is a line from a Wikipedia citation about him.


"Don Pedro Jaramillo, is a curandero, or faith healer from the Mexico-Texas region. He is known as the healer of Los Olmos and "el mero jefe" (English: the real chief) of the curanderos."

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Two Travelers

Tough Tommy, 2011. (Tanya photo)

 It is getting close to the end of 2011, CE. 

I thought it would be good to show you what your hosts at The Life and Times of Tommy Morganstern look like at this time.

Traveling Tanya, 2011. (Tommy photo)

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We Move North

 Tanya and Tommy start in Temecula, CA.

So we just moved up from Temecula, CA to Eureka!, CA--about 750 miles north.

We rented a 14 foot U-Haul truck for our stuff and a towing dolly for our Chevy Aveo and had a very nice trip.

I really like to drive these big Ford trucks--they are so comfortable inside--plenty of elbow room and excellent air conditioning-- great visibility, huge rear-view mirrors and you get a lot more respect from other drivers than when we practically disappear from view in our sub-compact car. BUT when you fill 'em up at the pump--man! There goes a hundred dollars!

There was a terrific wind storm in Los Angeles which caused power outages for several days and which blew sand across the highway as we traveled north but it only made the passage a little more interesting for us.

We went by some signs that read "Congress Has Created a Dust Bowl!"--probably because the water from the northern mountains wanted by the central valley farmers as it passes in canals toward the southern cities has become too expensive for their irrigation projects. We experienced first-hand the dust bowl conditions as the sky turned brown from blowing dirt for several miles.

We both love the old Pea Soup Anderson's restaurant near Buellton and we discovered another one which has opened in Santa Nella which we sampled. It had the same tasty soup as the old reliable and some other good entrees--Tanya had the baked  turkey breast and said it was delicious.

To save money, we stayed mainly at another old reliable: Motel 6, whenever we stopped for the night.

They were all standard good--the McDonald's of motels--no surprises. Clean. Friendly staff and free coffee in the morning. We checked out several other motels, but found they were all more expensive and not nearly as nice. Some have been renovated and these have cool push-button flush toilets and high-tech corner showers with the water coming from the outside of the shower stall---not from the wall as I have always experienced it! You face out toward the the nice, clean white curtain as you bathe. Very different interesting.Thanks Motel 6.

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Print Technology

The Kui Ka Lono was published using the latest photo-offset printing technology.

There were no computers but our electric/mechanical typewriters had reached their highest state of development. For example, they could self-justify columns of copy--but to change the size of type we had to use another photo-based machine.

Cutting and pasting were done by hand with sharp knives, real scissors and a hot, waxy layout paste.

When the full-sized page layouts had been completed by my students, with black patches where the photographs would be inserted later in the process, I would take them into Honolulu where  professional Hawaii Hochi newspaper technicians would photograph them, insert the offset-ready photographs and print as many copies as we wanted.

Creating our weekly newspaper was a team hands-on arts and crafts project--now gone the way of the buggy-whip and high button shoes--but lots of fun in it's time.

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Confusion

As the war in Viet Nam raged on, all over America sit-ins and demonstrations at universities and colleges became daily occurrences.

And another peculiar thing happened in this country--a "generation gap" developed.

The older people--the parents of the rioting youth--seemed to think the war was OK. They re-elected Richard Nixon president by a landslide--Nixon who was absolutely despised by almost all young people. The youth side of the generation gap supported a mellower man named McGovern who, I think I remember, promised to lower the voting age to eighteen and end the war.

Kui Ka Lono  staff had voted to publish their student newspaper as a collective, a sort of leaderless team governed by consensus--that is, no Editor.

This was very convenient when some irate reader came into the office to punch the Editor out for some offensive article about the war because he just couldn't punch everybody! 


Some of my journalism students decided to protest the war by chaining themselves to the flagpole in the center of the campus and I watched them being arrested and dragged away to police paddy wagons. 

What textbooks there were on mass communication and news writing were not much help to me under these chaotic conditions.


I believe in the old-fashioned "freedom of the press" and thought the students had a right to  speak their mind in the Kui Ka Lono but I also tried to encourage them to keep their articles balanced and to avoid lawsuits.

These were exciting times for this new Associate Professor!

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Kui Ka Lono

I have arrived at this personal high ground--Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at Leeward Community College in Hawaii--just as America is coming unglued.

It's the Viet Nam war and the Greening of America.

There is tremendous palpable unrest and anger among the youth of the country--especially at the colleges and universities: riots, occupation of university offices and campuses by excited students, tear gas and a student demonstrator shot to death at Kent State by a National Guard soldier. Student organizations like the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground are able to direct mass movements of young people.


"Question authority! Hell no we won't go! Old enough to die for our country, but not old enough to vote!""


Eighteen year old men are running away to Canada or burning their draft cards.

It's a confounded mess all over the country. 

Everywhere--even polite little Leeward Community College in Hawaii where I am now a faculty person--still young but now on the other side of the desk from the rioting youth.

Young men have been drafted into the army for years--in fact the reason I am in Hawaii is because when I was eighteen I registered--as every young man (not woman) in the country HAD to register for military duty. You had a choice back then--volunteer for the Navy, Marines or Air Force or be drafted into the army and I had chosen the Navy Reserve and was luckily sent to Hawaii.

This draft registration was a duty of American citizenship and no-one, except the halt, the lame and the blind, was exempt.
 
Now young men were being drafted into the army and sent to Viet Nam to fight. For what? Still unclear, but young men were killing and being killed or maimed for whatever reason.

One method of "communicating human thought" was and is the newspaper and I found myself the faculty adviser of the weekly student newspaper, Kui Ka Lono which changed radically from a highschooly "Cutie of the Week" publication to a meaningful, hard hitting  journal of disenchanted youth--and this was mainly because Leeward Community College had an "open door" policy for student admissions. 

Anyone could be a student at LCC--"give everyone who wanted at least a chance  to get a higher education."

But there was a new law that college students were exempt from military duty for as long as they were students. 

As long as a young man was passing his college courses or wasn't kicked out for some other reason--he would not go to Viet Nam--so if, as a professor, you failed some young man, you just might be sentencing him to die overseas. 

Not so good.

And the most disaffected youth were drawn to Kui Ka Lono like steel filings to a magnet--one publication where they could freely speak their mind. A newspaper not controlled by monied or political interests--paid for by Student Activities fees and loosely overseen by their own elected Student Council. 

And they could re-take my news writing class several times--for credit.

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