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Bert Gordon and Suzanne Perkins celebrated Valentine’s Day on February 14th with Bert giving a presentation “Valentines and Chocolate: Their Connections through History” at the Contra Costa County Library in Orinda. The talk covered the history of Valentine’s Day, whose origins appear to date back to pre-Roman pastoral festivals; the history of chocolate from Mayan times to the present; and, lastly, the marriage of the two in the mid-19th century. The Ghirardelli & Girard Confectionery Company began in San Francisco in 1852. Richard Cadbury is said to have produced the earliest heart-shaped box with Cupids and rosebuds for Valentine’s Day in 1861. The modern chocolate era has been said to have begun with the development of milk chocolate by Daniel Peter in 1875 in Switzerland. Through the 20th and into the 21st centuries, chocolate was given as a Valentine’s gift from men to women, though increasing numbers of women in recent years are gifting chocolate for the holiday. The talk was followed by a chocolate tasting at the library.

Peter G. Meyerhof gave a presentation titled “Mapping the Northern End of the Camino Real” on April 18th at the Annual Conference of the California Missions Foundation, held in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of the founding of Mission Dolores. The path of the Camino Real connecting the 21 missions in California has long been a topic of interest. The portion of the trail north of San Francisco that linked Mission San Rafael and Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma has been less studied. Some of the trail can be inferred from diaries, diseños (maps), and even from LIDAR. The last portion of the trail as it crossed the ridge of the Sonoma Mountains into the Sonoma Valley can now be predicted from an 1847  survey and testimony in a land claim deposition that sheds light on the route.

Elizabeth Schott continues to get the word out regarding the subject of her forthcoming book, Dorothy Liebes. She gave two talks in April: “Dorothy Liebes and the Healing Power of Weaving” to the Redwood Guild of Fiber Arts and “Useful and Beautiful: Modernism, Dorothy Liebes and the Decorative Arts at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.”
—Rose Marie Cleese