Members' Recent Activities:
Chris Webber writes: “There’s a new hymnal out there for folk who like to sing—and for people who care about justice and peace. World Library Publications (a division of GIA Publications) has published my collection of over a hundred hymns titled Songs of Justice, Peace, and Love: The Sharon Hymnal. Set to music by contemporary composers, as well as to traditional and familiar tunes, the texts center on a wide range of subjects from Advent to Easter as well as hunger and homelessness.
In May Joe C. Miller gave his talk on women’s suffrage to the Canadian Women’s Club of San Francisco, “Wild Women Suffragists and their Reputation as Sex Radicals. “It was well received,” he writes. Joe has also developed a new presentation: “How Women’s Clubs Lost Their Moral Authority When Women Got the Vote.” He posits that during the heyday of American women’s clubs, 1890 to 1920, “whenever women’s clubs lobbied for the creation of parks, schools, libraries, or safe water supplies, people understood that they were doing it for the public good, whereas politicians and businessmen were often suspected of having selfish motives.” Joe intends to give the new talk to other groups. (He is among several speakers and performers listed on an interesting website: NationalWomensHistoryAlliance.org/California/.) Joe concluded his report with his appreciation of the financial support (mini-grants) he has received from the Institute.
Harvey Schwartz has a new book coming out this fall entitled Labor Under Siege: Big Bob McEllrath and the ILWU’s Fight for Organized Labor in an Anti-Union Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022). Harvey and his coauthor Ronald E. Magden have written compelling stories and found forceful voices which “capture a tenacious union in transition. Big Bob—six-foot-four Robert McEllrath’s waterfront handle—was heralded for his powerful speaking style, charisma, unifying vision, and negotiating prowess. President of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for twelve eventful years, McEllrath retired in 2018 after nearly forty years as a union officer. More than just a telling of a storied career, Labor under Siege explores how the influential union persisted in an era when the US labor movement was under attack and seemingly in retreat.” (From the publisher’s flier describing the book.)
Sometime in Africa by Neil Dukas was published in May. “Convinced his college education was incomplete,” the nicely printed announcement reads, “Neil set out on an ill-considered 14,000 mile journey on the cheap across the length of Africa determined to address the shortcomings in his schooling and to experience, first-hand, some fragment of the developing world. The year was 1983, when Africa hovered between post-war decolonization and the advent of the internet. The author, dogged by a variety of ailments, stumbles from one self-inflicted near-death experience to the next. Yet surviving by the grace of the people he chances upon he filled three journals of priceless memories.” Neil’s third book can be ordered through Amazon.
Bonfire Saloon is
Steve Levi’s latest publication. “I collected authentic names, events, cases, and incidents of the Alaska Gold Rush and condensed them into a single night, 3 December 1903, in a saloon in Nome. The book, which is history disguised as literature, in this case narrative poetry, gives a street level snap shot, an in-the-weeds look at the grit, grime and actual events in the middle of winter during the gold rush. (Winter lasts from mid-September to the first of June.) Historic photos illustrate this colorful period in Alaska’s history. For a glimpse of the contents see my short YouTube videos Connie the Wiggler and Marshal Jew Bob.”
Bonfire Saloon is available for purchase at
www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi. Steve adds that a spoken-word overview of the Alaska Gold Rush, which he wrote and was funded by the Alaska Humanities Forum, can be found on
YouTube .
After a seven-year sojourn researching and writing about a canyon in the wilds of Mendocino County,” Dot Brovarney reports, “I am now working with a Ukiah designer to produce a visually beautiful book. Mendocino Refuge: Lake Leonard & Reeves Canyon is a cultural and natural history of an upper Russian River watershed—home to hardy folk, ancient redwoods, a variety of wildlife, and the county’s largest lake, which Pomo peoples likely held as sacred space. The discovery of a trunk filled with family memorabilia led me down a number of fascinating and winding paths, including Native medicine traditions, two centuries of logging practices, and current conservation efforts in two watersheds. The 186-page book, with 200 images and maps, will be published through my business, Landcestry, in December of this year.
Welcome to our newest members.
Vince Emery created Vince Emery Productions http://www.emerybooks.com/
where he combines his skills as writer, literary detective, editor, and publisher, producing books and videos by and about established writers. “Our goal,” he writes, “is to give readers a deeper, closer connection with their favorite authors.” Dashiell Hammett, Harvey Milk, Jack London, and George Sterling are among the featured authors. Vince is currently working on “George Sterling's Greatest Hits,” “The Harvey Milk Letters,” and soon, “Writers of Carmel: An Anthology.”
Nathan Alexander Foxton is an artist living in San Francisco. Before moving here last year he had been working in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Harrison Center for the Arts (curator), at Ivy Tech Community College, University of Indianapolis, and Herron School of Art + Design (adjunct instructor). He’s a figurative painter, constructing space from a two-dimensional perspective. Nathan is interested in telling stories through his art about the soul of place and has a background teaching art history among other subjects. He has exhibited his work in group and solo shows.
John Hyde Barnard is a musician, writer, historian, and a retired Los Angeles City Librarian. He recently signed a publishing contract for “The Creole Incident: The Beginning of the End of Slavery,” a runner-up in the San Francisco Writers Conference Adult Non-Fiction Category (2021). “This historical narrative,” he writes, “details how the Union and the Constitution were saved, twenty years before the Civil War, by the actions of a few select members of the House of Representatives, led by the venerable John Quincy Adams, along with a handful of radical abolitionists and 19 enslaved individuals. The book is slated for release in late 2022.” John is still active as a musical arranger, director, publisher and performer and divides his time between Sausalito, Los Angeles and New York.
Members: Please submit news of your history-related publications, lectures, awards, research finds, etc. to info@instituteforhistoricalstudy.org.
Posted in Institute Activities
The California and the West study group invites you to tour the exhibition at the History Museum of Los Gatos, American Bohemia: The Cats Estate in Los Gatos. The exhibition explores the storied lives of Charles Erskine Scott Wood and Sara Bard Field,
Writing and Revising Narrative History
Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of four books: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (Scribner 2022); The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Scribner 2020; a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History); Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012); and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and TIME. Before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014, she taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. She grew up in Colorado but now lives in Boston with her husband and two cats.
Oliver B. Pollak retired in 2012 from the academic world of the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he taught since 1974. He retired from practicing law in 2016. He and his wife Karen left Omaha in October 2016 and settled in Richmond where they have the riches of their two sons, grandchildren, pleasant weather, the Bay Trail, museums and libraries, cuisine and wine country, a view of Mount Tamalpais, the internet, old and new friends, and visitors. His pen and keyboard cannot be stilled as ideas rush in. This story is designed to display methodology, technology, Disability History, and making a living under very challenging circumstances. It is inspiring and has elements of a Greek Tragedy.