California magazine blog

Doe Library, 1912-2012

Bene Legere Saecla Vincere. To read well is to vanquish the centuries.

Doe Library celebrates 100 years.

Gala Affairs

Charter Gala is fast approaching. The 2012 event in celebration of the University of California's 144th anniversary is scheduled for the evening of March 24th at the historic Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Registration opens on February 2nd.

The photograph above was taken at the 1946 Charter Banquet, also held at the Palace. That night the poet Robert Frost was awarded an honorary degree by the University and then-Governor and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren '12 was honored as Alumnus of the Year.

This year, the Alumnus of the Year is Eric Schmidt, Google Executive Chairman and former CEO, who earned both a master’s degree ('79) and a Ph.D. ('82) from UC Berkeley.

Ripe for the Picking

A story published online at The Atlantic.com about “The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods” has caused a minor sensation and perhaps also some unwarranted hysteria. Unfortunately, it seems that food writer Ari LeVaux got much of the science he was writing about wrong. Various writers with a better handle on the topic have registered their skepticism, including Cal alum and science writer, Charlie Petit. According to his detractors, LeVaux didn't serve up "very real dangers" but rather ill-founded fears.

Of course, the debate on GM foods is an important and ongoing one. Indeed, our ability to feed a world population headed for 9 billion or more by mid-century could very well hinge upon the success of lab-improved seed strains to increase yields of staple crops. Frank Browning, a frequent contributor and author of the book Apples: The Story of the Fruit of Temptation, interviewed various Berkeley scientists in making just such an argument. His story, "Dinner by Design," ran in our "Food for Thought" issue from Winter 2009, as did another article about the challenges of feeding the world, called "The Locavore's Dilemma" by environmental reporter Glen Martin.

Alice's Restaurant

For our latest issue, we sent former Berkeleyan editor Jonathan King to rummage around in the Chez Panisse Archives in the Bancroft Library. On the 40th anniversary of the restaurant, we were looking for a fresh take on a subject about which it seemed everything had already been written. While King admits that the patchy archives failed to shine much light on the genesis of the institution, he produced an illuminating article nonetheless. It is interesting, for example, just to behold the cast of characters who were there at the beginning. Not just Alice Waters, but also people like Tom Luddy, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival, who helped attract an influential clientele to the fledgling establishment, the artist David Goines, who designed the sign and menus, and architect Jeremiah Tower, who, according to the legend, came in and "fixed the soup" a la Remy in the film Ratatouille.

Those characters all figure in the new book by Waters called 40 Years of Chez Panisse, a scrapbook, really, of artifacts and memories from those who were there, including an introduction by Calvin Trillin.

Trillin calls Waters the Emma Goldman of New American Cuisine, a revolutionary spirit forged by her student days at Berkeley at the height of the Free Speech Movement. And that is precisely where the book begins, with a picture of Sproul Plaza circa 1964, a crowd of protesters massed before what are now called the Savio Steps. Waters informs her readers she is "somewhere in that crowd" and recalls Mario Savio saying, "America is becoming ever more the utopia of sterilized, automated contentment." In her own life, she intimates, she was searching for a "contentment that was unsterilized, fertile and handmade."

She found it in the kitchen.

Hellman's Present

Warren Hellman, Cal Class of '55, Alumnus of the Year 2003, died Sunday evening from complications related to leukemia. He was 77. Friends of the man will not be surprised to learn that he took to calling himself Luke Emia as his condition worsened. He seemed to approach everything in life with a mix of intensity and self-deprecating humor.

Hellman was many things to many people: father and husband, investment banker, philanthropist, horseman, skier, banjo-picker. It is in that last role--as a member of old-timey outfit, The Wrongler's--and as the patron of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the annual music festival in Golden Gate Park which he founded in 2001, that he may ultimately be best remembered. Per his wishes, the festival will carry on without him, (he set up an endowment to ensure as much) but it won't be the same without him--him in his Nudie-style suit with the Stars of David emblazoned on the sleeves. "The Rhinestone Jewboy," he jokingly called himself.

CALIFORNIA wrote about Hellman and his festival for last Summer's Music Issue. The article, by Sylvie Simmons, was entitled "Hillbillionaire." In it, Hellman recalled the time he was approached by a promoter who wanted to acquire the event. Hellman said to the man, ‘Why would you want to buy it? It’s free." Just like all the best things in life.

 

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Christopher Hitchens, the prolific journalist and polemicist (among the targets of his pen were Henry Kissinger, Mother Theresa and Bill Clinton, his classmate at Oxford), has died at age 62. He was an occasional lecturer at UC Berkeley and an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Here he is in conversation with Harry Kreisler, Executive Director of UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies. Hitchens, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer last June. He seems to have written and published more in the interim than most writers produce in a career. It seems fitting that his latest book, a collection of essays entitled Arguably, is both a bestseller and, according to The New York Times, one of the 10 best books of 2011.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Dark Energy

2011 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Saul Perlmutter says he was the kind of kid who thought, "someone should have given us an owner's manual" to the universe. Lacking that, he and his fellow researchers have set out to create one. The job is nowhere near complete, of course. As astrophysicist Onsi Fakhouri says in the show, "70 percent of the stuff in the universe is this thing that we just do not understand at all"--namely, dark energy. In this installment of KQED's Quest, Perlmutter explains some of the science behind his prize-winning discovery of dark energy and how our universe is expanding in all directions. The subject matter is pretty mind-blowing, but as it urges "in large friendly letters" on the cover of every Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, DON'T PANIC.

Jumpin' Joe

We featured the story of Cal alum Joe Kapp's legal battle with the NFL in the last issue of the magazine. Here's a highlight reel from his days leading the Vikings plus a passage from the article.

Unlike most quarterbacks, Joe never ran out-of-bounds to dodge a hit. He’d either drop a shoulder and charge, or spring over would-be tacklers. They called him Jumpin’ Joe for his leaping passes and his propensity for vaulting over defenders, a practice the NFL cracked down on after Kapp’s knee caught a Cleveland Browns linebacker on the chin and left the man unconscious on the field.

When they weren’t thinking up new names for him, the writers made sport of Kapp’s uncouth style and seeming lack of prowess. Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray described him as “glacier fast” and compared his passes to “wounded airplanes looking for a place to land—in the dark.” A Newsweek scribe called Kapp a “big, belligerent example of everything a top pro quarterback isn’t supposed to be.”

“My whole image was not clásico—to say the least,” Kapp admits. “But I knew what I was doing.”

Read the rest here.