California exploded onto the American scene in 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, ended the Mexican-American War and made California a territory of the United States, open to migration and settlement. And just days earlier, in January 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. The result: California almost overnight became “Gold Mountain” and the hope and dream of many. As word of the gold find spread, the Chinese referred to California as “JinShan”, from “jin” = “gold” and “shan” = “mountain”. The Chinese were some of the first to arrive in the area to begin mining…

Los Angeles to the visitor doesn’t just encompass Hollywood, it IS Hollywood.  Those omnipresent 45-foot-high white letters on the mountainside above LA indicate a neighborhood that is also a business, a technological marvel, a mindset, and maybe the most significant American product ever.  When we think Hollywood, we think about the movies of course, but also television and other forms of mass entertainment, all of which are so embedded in our lives that we have no idea what America (and the world) would be like without them.   When Joey and I have visited Los Angeles, both this week and in…

Our very first home purchase in 1982 was a little grey bungalow in the Bellevue neighborhood of Richmond.  We paid something like $42,000 for it and immediately proceeded to fix it up.  Some of the work was necessary, like scouring grimy windows, but most just arose from the buoyant energy of thrilled young homeowners, like the two months spent scraping up the linoleum kitchen floor.  We loved the house and the time of life it encompassed, including bringing home our daughter Lauren to it in 1986.  I think it actually imprinted on us in a mysterious way, because we have…

We’ve made them our home, our vacation destinations, and our preferred biking trails. AirStream campgrounds? I wish. No, islands! Throughout our 50 years together, islands have played a disproportionate role in our life, and for some reason, we generally love islands and spending time on them. They seem to have both physical and metaphorical appeal–surrounded by water and sand, distinct and separate from the rest of life. Perhaps John Donne is right that “no man is an island,” but this man certainly seems to want to spend much of his life on one and like one.  I wrote earlier about…

Model society, planned city, social reform, religious retreat–no matter the name, a number of the original thirteen colonies, as well as many, many other groups and endeavors since, sought to plan and create a better life for themselves than the one they were experiencing. Freedom from persecution, debt, famine, and oppression led many to flee to the New World, while the opportunity for property ownership, riches, and self-determination beckoned to many more. This quest to plan an ideal setting and situation has been a theme in my life for decades (the “Planner Pierce” moniker has followed me everywhere), and our…