The Rocky Horror Show (The Empty Space 2024)

I will admit it, until last week, I was a Rocky Horror virgin. I have never seen the movie, and hadn’t gone to any of the local movie or live versions, mostly because they tended to be the late showings. (Hey, I have a job and kids and staying out all hours of the night doesn’t happen much at all.) 

 

This particular local version, at The Empty Space, was a fully live version, not a movie showing, and was the original stage version, not the screenplay. There are a few differences. I decided to go see this in part because Ron Warren was co-directing it, and because we had a few friends in the cast, including both Gradowitz girls. 

 

The show is, of course, totally campy and over the top and silly. But that is the point, and the production was a heck of a lot of fun.

 

I’m not really going to recap it, as most already know the plot. And really, Frankenstein meets vintage alien schlock - that’s enough to know in advance. Oh, and that it has significant sexual content so don’t bring your little kids. (If you are considering bringing your teens, the content includes simulated oral sex, bare breasts except for pasties, granny underwear, and plenty of innuendo.) 

 

This production had some interesting features - and it is always a fun surprise to see what TES does with their limited budgets for sets and costumes. 

 

I found the use of an elevated backstage for the narrator to be in interesting touch. It meant that Ronnie Warren had to sit in plain view the whole time, and keep character throughout. Which he, of course did, with a stuffy British accent and marvelous deadpan. It is always a joy to see Ron on stage - it has to be 25 years now since we used to see him at Bakersfield College when my wife and I were dating. 

 

The straight couple (well, at least in a few senses if not all), Brad and Janet, were played by Joshua Tiede and Molly Jiron. I can’t recall seeing Tiede in anything previously, but Jiron is a regular at TES. They had good chemistry, and, importantly, sang well. 

 

(I have to say, this may be the best vocal work I have heard at TES - solid all night.) 

 

Many of the parts were doubled or ensemble, and I’ll just touch on them. Tim Lemons made what I believe is his debut as Dr. Scott. Anjel Flores played both the usher and the lovesick Magenta with a great voice. Our friend Selah Gradowitz covered plenty of dancing and atmosphere along with the other “phantoms.” Kelsey Morrow was loveable as the unfortunate Eddie. 

 

Marina Gradowitz was creepy as hell as Riff Raff, and somehow manages to be the loudest actor despite her small size. 

I wouldn't mess with Marina if I were you...

 

Bret Mcglew was surprisingly tender and loveable as a very buff Rocky (aka the creature.) 

 It isn't easy being created...

And finally, there was Libby Letlow-Gray as the outrageous Dr. Frank-n-furter. She has been on stage not only locally, but in Los Angeles - a working pro. As with a few of the parts, she played it mostly as a male role, but definitely with plenty of gender bending. 

 

One of the things that I liked about the vibe of this show is that it really didn’t take itself too seriously. TES has been pretty good about that over the years. With casts that usually include younger students, the light-hearted feeling clearly helps those younger actors loosen up a bit and find their style. There is something unique about local theater, and also about the sort of low-budget, high artistic values approach of the smaller venues. 

 

All of this made for a fun evening, well worth the low price of admission. The Rocky Horror Show runs one more weekend, so if you are local, go see it!

 

Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World by William Alexander

Source of book: Borrowed from the library. 

 

I have a somewhat long list of friends who are readers (birds of a flock, etc…) and when one of them recommends a book, I definitely at least take a look. If that book happens to be nerdy, well, that’s my vibe, so I usually end up reading it. This is a great way to discover interesting books. 

 

This one was recommended by my friend Sara, who has been the source of a number of books over the years. And really, does anyone seriously think I could resist a book about tomatoes?

 

(Also, read her post about the book - she highlights some great quotes I left out.) 

 

I have thought about which foods I could (if medically indicated) give up most easily. Sugar is actually not particularly high - I can live without sweet stuff. But a harder sell would be coffee. And the hardest might be tomatoes. I love tomatoes - even the bland supermarket ones. 

 

Alexander’s book tells the history of the tomato, focusing on ten specific varieties (and thus episodes.) So, we start with (in the preface) the original New World tomatoes, and then see how they (rather literally) took over the entire world. The Italian “Pomodoro,” which the Medici family made mainstream. The possibly fictional Robert Johnson who is credited with proving to Americans that tomatoes weren’t poisonous. The San Marzano - the first mainstream canned tomato. The Margarita pizza, another legend that is probably not true. Mr. Heinz and the development of modern ketchup - which involves some fun legal and regulatory shenanigans. That time Mussolini tried to ban pasta (and also the story of how tomatoes finally came to be put on top of pasta - that’s a relatively modern development.) The first hybrid tomato, Big Boy. The development of the tasteless supermarket tomato. The resurgence of heirloom varieties. And finally, the modern trend of greenhouse hydroponic tomatoes. 

 

It’s fun stuff. 

 

Alexander also has a breezy, humorous style of writing. This is less toward the science side of the PopSci spectrum, and more toward the popular side. Don’t expect extensive footnotes or scholarly sources. This is fun stuff, not something you would cite in your school essay. 

 

This is not a bad thing. It’s not like the author is just making stuff up. He does his research, and then interviews sources. But this book isn’t here to carefully lay out facts. Rather, it is to tell stories, and inform along the way. I found it quite fun. 

 

The preface is illustrative of the style. After a quick and dirty history of the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes, he flips the script.

 

Within fourteen months, this once-thriving civilization would be in ruins, having fallen victim to Spanish aggression, germs, and their insatiable lust for silver and gold. But the true treasure of Mexico, one that in the end would have an impact comparable to that of all the precious metals in the New World, would soon find its way on a ship to Europe, to forever change the course of history. 

I’m speaking, of course, of the tomato. 

 

Early in the book, the author visits what is purported to be the scene of the unveiling of a basket of tomatoes at the Palazzo Vecchio. Which is now a government office. He is surprised to see such a historical building in use this way. But, as the secretary who guides him notes: “If we kept all the historic buildings as they were, we would have no place to live and work. This is Italy.” 

 

Speaking of history, the author notes that before the Spanish, Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) was arguably “the largest, cleanest, and most prosperous city in the world.” It is easy to forget that there was an incredible civilization in the Americas, before disease and violence nearly wiped it out. 

 

Also interesting history is the story of Bernardo de Sahagun, a monk who is considered one of the first anthropologists. Included in his periodic reports was clear evidence of the edibility (and deliciousness) of tomatoes. However, these were suppressed by the Catholic Church, presumably, as the author puts it, because Bernardinoo was “a tad too sympathetic toward the heathens whom Bernardino had been sent over to convert to Western religion and culture.” 

 

I found the chapter on pizza to be particularly fascinating. While pizza originated in Italy, the version that has taken over the world is a distinctly American creation - created by Italian immigrants who adapted the food to a new culture and place. 

 

A disconcerting fact in this chapter is that a 1989 study showed that pizza delivery drivers had a death rate on par with coal miners, and twice as high as roofers. Yikes. 

 

Those of us of a certain age likely remember Domino’s 30 minute promise, and also “the Noid.” Anyone remember this? 

 

Well, it turns out that a paranoid schizophrenic named Kenneth Lamar Noid took this personally, and took a franchise hostage. Fortunately, after making the guy a pizza, the employees escaped while he ate it. A very strange episode. 

 

As a lawyer (and one interested in the history of government regulation - which has been an overwhelmingly positive force, by the way) I found the history of ketchup to be noteworthy. 

 

The United States has always had a weird anti-intellectual, anti-science bent, and this is how we ended up in the 1880s with literally zero regulation at the federal regulation over food safety. Even a half century later - before the New Deal - all kinds of shit could (and did) end up in food. Plaster. Formaldehyde. Arsenic. Lead. Cocaine and heroin. Sawdust. And a bunch of other bad stuff. 

 

It is easy to forget this, in our own day when food is generally regulated, inspected, and therefore unlikely to kill you. (At least in the short term.) The American Right, unfortunately, is hell-bent on eliminating these crucial regulations, thus enabling greater corporate profit at the expense of the lives of ordinary citizens. 

 

Also in this chapter: a trivia fact to annoy your friends and family with. Did you know that the reason ketchup is so hard to get out of the bottle is that it is a non-Newtonian fluid? Science!

 

And that brings us to Mussolini. 

 

Italians had tolerated Mussolini’s thuggish Blackshirts, the violent suppression of labor unions, and the murder of dissidents. But this time the fascists had gone too far. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a founding member of the Fascist Party who’d helped boost Mussolini into power eight years earlier, had published a manifesto in late 1930 that called for “the abolition of pasta, the absurd Italian gastronomic religion,” claiming it left Italians heavy, shapeless, and (lest anyone miss the point) unprepared for war.

 

At issue was a brew of factors that might sound familiar today. Pasta required wheat, and Italy imported most of its wheat from northern countries. What Italy grew a lot of was rice, and switching to rice would mean eating local. 

 

But there was more to it than that. 

 

Mussolini viewed food as a tool to control the immediate needs of the population and to promote a fascist agenda of self-dependency, austerity, and increased productivity and reproductivity (to replace all the Italians who’d emigrated in the previous decades). 

 

Not only did Italians (particularly those of the south) object to this forced change in diet, attempts to grow wheat in unsuitable places displaced cash crops like tomatoes and caused exports to fall. 

 

Oh, and they ended up with huge labor shortages both because of immigrant labor drying up, but also because of Mussolini’s policy of limiting women in the workplace. Hey, does that sound familiar these days? J.D. Vance, cough, cough…

 

The book also touches on SpagettiOs. I haven’t eaten those in many many years. (And the ravioli was better. Just saying.) My favorite line is this one, regarding the year-long study that was done that settled on the “O” as the shape of pasta “children could earth without making a mess.” Ha ha, that’s a good one! 

 

(They might’ve saved themselves a lot of time and money had they first sat down to a breakfast of Cheerios with their kids.) 

 

That’s the last of the lines I wrote down, but I should note that there are many other enlightening passages. I found the process of attempting to develop antibiotic-resistant tomato genes (it’s a long story, and less lurid than the press made it out to be) quite interesting, as well as the question of carbon dioxide costs of field tomatoes versus greenhouse tomatoes. (It’s….complicated.) 

 

This book was a great light (but not fluffy) read, both informative and humorous. I note that the author has written another book about tomatoes. Hmm. Maybe he has a thing for them too…

 

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Source of book: borrowed from the library

 

The last year or so, a couple of online friends and I have formed an informal book club, where we read agreed upon books as schedules permit. Say what you like about all the downsides of social media and the internet, but I have also found a number of friends that way - several of which I have now met in person. That applies to one of the members of this club. After a decade of online friendship, we were able to meet this last spring, and it was a real pleasure. 

 

I never saw the movie version of Fight Club. I’m not much of a movie watcher (although I do enjoy them when I do), and honestly, nothing about the movie appealed to me. 

 

Not only that, but a certain generation of young men - a certain type - fawned all over the movie. It reminded me a lot of how certain kinds of teen girls read Wuthering Heights and think it is a romantic love story. 

 

I agreed to read the book because my friend had read it and recommended it as better than the movie (books usually are) and because it fit with an ongoing discussion we have been having about toxic masculinity. 

 

Having read it now, I think the Wuthering Heights comparison is even more apt. To admire and want to adopt the “fight club” ethos is to miss the point of the book, I think. 

 

Chuck Palahniuk has had a rather interesting life. Before his writing career took off, he had a blue collar upbringing and a blue collar job as a diesel mechanic. In fact, one might say that his first writing experience was with repair manuals he wrote for Freightliner. 

 

While working for Freightliner, he met his partner, who he has been with for over 30 years. Weirdly (although possibly understandably), Palahniuk hid that he was gay for years, referring to his partner as his “wife” in interviews. Subsequent inverviews show him pretty defensive about it; honestly his interviews reveal him to have a chip on his shoulder and a paranoia streak. 

 

In light of the book, that is kind of interesting. There is some degree of biographical writing perhaps. 

 

I am not sure how much of the plot to even include here. I knew some of it before I read the book, just from listening to other people and seeing the trailers in theaters and on TV. It probably can’t be spoiled at this point, except for the few people who studiously avoid popular culture. 

 

The idea of “fighting as a means of radical psychotherapy” is practically a meme in our culture now, as is the idea of “fighting one’s self” in a very literal sense. 

 

Palahniuk describes his style as “transgressive fiction” - and it definitely does run roughshod over taboo and social niceties. He isn’t the first, to say the least. One could consider “picaresques” of the 18th Century to be early examples. Such a genre is of course firmly rooted in the culture of its time - taboos change. 

 

I haven’t really decided how I feel about the book. It certainly taps into a certain kind of toxic masculinity, a sense of male frustration about living in a consumerist society. Which I totally get. I’m not a big fan either, although I prefer to take my frustrations out making music or walking up mountains. 

 

Another factor in why I didn’t find the book to resonate personally is that I was raised with a far healthier sense of masculinity than this book describes. The narrator first seeks emotional connection in attending deadly diseases support groups (perhaps inspired by the author’s volunteer work transporting members of these groups), and then in the fights at Fight Club. 

 

My own upbringing allowed for a good degree of emotions for men and boys. I am grateful to my parents for that part of my upbringing. They wanted me to be healthier emotionally than they were, and I believe they succeeded to a significant extent. 

 

(There were really only two issues I think that undermined this otherwise good approach my parents took. First, expressing negative emotions about them - and especially my sister - was off limits. So I ended up acting out rather than speaking out. Indeed, it took me into my 30s before I was able to actually express to them my negative feelings about their behavior - and they did not take it well. Second, after we got involved with Bill Gothard’s cult, expressing negative emotions was increasingly viewed as “rebellion.” You can guess all that flowed from that.)

 

Because of this upbringing, particularly before our cult days, I have been able to form emotionally close relationships with people - and not just my wife. I have friends, male and female, who I am able to be vulnerable, and I am glad of that. One could say that I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, at least once I get to know someone. 

 

Before American Evangelicalism became a Trump Cult, I felt that church was also a place where I could get that intimacy that all of us, male or female, need. I miss that, but have worked to expand my friendship circles and find my tribe in other ways. 

 

To me, the point of the book isn’t that having fight clubs is a good thing, or that manly men need to engage in ritual violence to find emotional connection, or any of that rot. Rather, it is that, without healthy ways of finding emotional outlet and intimacy, humans act out in violent and antisocial ways. And, as a corollary, consumerism is no substitute for connection, as the protagonist discovers. 

 

While I think the book has its flaws and its strengths, I can see how it would be popular with (and misunderstood by) a certain kind of surface reader. The style is deliberately simple, with short sentences and repeated mantras. I can all too easily be read as an uncritical paean to violent toxic masculinity - just like people read the Bible and adopt all of the worst of what it depicts. But to really understand Fight Club, you have to look at what is actually happening: the slow destruction of the narrator’s psyche as he self-medicates with violence against himself, others, and society - it is an analogue to heroin, with its highs, lows, withdrawal effects, and ultimate self-destruction. 

 

There are a few lines I jotted down as being worth quoting. 

 

For example, this description of the support groups. 

 

Everyone clinging and risking to share their worst fear, that their death is coming head-on and the barrel of a gun is pressed against the back of their throats. 

 

This is an obvious parallel to the final (and opening) scene in the book, with the narrator on top of a skyscraper with a gun in his mouth. 

 

Much later in the book, he expands on what he likes about the groups. 

 

This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. 

If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window.

You had their full attention.

People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. 

And when they spoke, they weren’t telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before. 

 

It is sad to require the perception of dying to get this kind of intimacy. This is what friendship - even more than marriage - is for. 

 

At the groups, he meets another “tourist” (one who is faking being sick) named Marla. Who is every bit as mentally unhealthy as he is. They recognize each other, but agree not to squeal - it is a mutually assured destruction situation. 

 

There is another scene early in the book, that makes no sense until far later. The narrator’s apartment blows up, and his weirdly dissociated description of it is haunting. 

 

Still, a foot of concrete is important when your next-door neighbor lets the battery on her hearing aid go and has to watch her game shows at full blast. Or when a volcanic blast of burning gas and debris that used to be your living-room set and personal effects blows out your floor-to-ceiling windows and sails down flaming to leave just your condo, only yours, a gutted charred concrete hole in the cliffside of the building. 

These things happen. 

 

While I disagree with the narrator’s solution to consumerism, I do find his diagnosis of the problem to be plausible. And this line, coming after a detailed, name-dropping description of his carefully curated crap is excellent. 

 

And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue.

 

And then there is more detailed description. 

 

Oh, not my refrigerator. I’d collected shelves full of different mustards, some stone-ground, some English pub style. There were fourteen flavors of fat-free salad dressing, and seven kinds of capers. 

 

That’s only a slight exaggeration of my own pantry. Sigh. I feel seen. At least I know how to cook with them. 

 

After this destruction, he ends up crashing at the house of the anti-hero, Tyler Durden. (I won’t spoil the rest of the story about this.) Who lives in a decidedly different place. 

 

This is the perfect house for dealing drugs. There are no neighbors. There’s nothing else on Paper Street except for warehouses and the pulp mill. The fart smell of steam from the paper mill, and the hamster cage smell of wood chips in orange pyramids around the mill. This is the perfect house for dealing drugs because a bah-zillion trucks drive down Paper Street everyday, but at night, Tyler and I are alone for a half mile in every direction. 

 

The final line I want to feature is much more philosophical - perhaps even theological. It is part of a recurring conversation about transgression and meaning. This particular moment comes out of another recurring conversation, about how we tend to think that God is like our human father. 

 

(This is one important thing I understand about my mother, is that her desperate need to make God love her is 100 percent an extension of her failure to get her father to love her.) 

 

Tyler is perhaps the most nihilistic of the characters, but his perspective is certainly interesting. 

 

“What you have to consider,” he says, “is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.”

How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate is better than his indifference. 

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

 

This may be the core of the book, and the best explanation for the actions of its characters. Everyone wants to matter. Everyone needs and craves connection. A negative connection is better than nothing at all. Being bloodied by another man is more satisfying than sleepwaking through life. Blowing shit up and earning the wrath of society is more satisfying than society not caring about you at all. Better to be evil than indifferent. 

 

It’s not my personal preference for philosophy, but then again, I believe I matter to at least a few other people, and that my life has meaning, even if I have to create it. 

 

Fight Club was definitely an interesting book. I’m not sure I am eager to read more by the author, but I am glad I read this one. 

 

***

 

Weird bonus fact: one of our otherbook club’s members works at a local library, and she says that Palahniuk’s books are the most stolen from the library. Tyler Durden would probably approve, I guess. But seriously? It’s not like they are that difficult to buy. 

 

The Problem of Louis Agassiz

Last weekend, a friend and I took a quick backpack trip up Bishop Creek to Bishop Pass and back. It was a first for me with this trail, although I have been up the canyon immediately to the south (well, east actually, but south down the range.) The Sierra Nevada are my happy place, and I was thrilled to do an east Sierra hike for the first time in years. 

 

 The view north from Bishop Pass. Saddlerock Lake is the big one in the rear. 

Mt. Goode is at far left.

Bishop pass is located in a relatively low spot in the Sierra crest - at 11,792 feet. (As I said, relatively low.) It is situated between two giant mountains. Mt. Goode (13,085) to the west, and Mt. Agassiz (13,893) to the east. And those are not as tall as the several 14,000+ foot mountains just southeast of Agassiz. 

 Mt. Agassiz from Bishop Pass

Aperture Peak is behind and to the left.

 

This hike was in part inspired by me and my friend’s mutual love of Kim Stanley Robinson’s book, The High Sierra. In that delightful collection of random yet connected episodes and essays are a series of writings about the names in the Sierra. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 

 

The good ones really are great - one of the peaks this hike went past is called “Cloudripper” for example. The bad ones are mostly boring - how many “Gem Lakes” do you really need? 

 

But the ugly ones are named after people who are problematic in some way. 

 

Locally, the worst of these is Breckenridge Mountain (I have hiked on its slopes many times), which is named after Confederate traitor John Breckinridge (yes, the name is misspelled) and is listed as a remaining Confederate monument. I very much hope that this is renamed as part of California’s push to remove racial slurs and monuments to horrid people from its official records. I propose naming it after local writer, teacher, and conservationist Ardis Walker. 

 

Part of the problem with these names is that they are often people who never saw the Sierra, or never had any significant connection to it. They were just famous or rich fucks and thus get their names on things. Think about naming a mountain after the Elongated Muskmelon, for example. Just gross. 

 

Some of the names, though, are more complicated. 

 

Louis Agassiz is definitely one of these. 

 

***

 

Back when I was a kid, our family had a bunch of “christian” biographies for kids, the Sower series. While they were generally interesting to me, I later realized that they were definitely hagiographies, not accurate and nuanced biographies. The point was to highlight “heroes who were Christians!” for kids. 

 

What was missing fell into two categories. First, a lot of these Christians weren’t exactly the Evangelical sort that the biographies strongly implied. Sir Isaac Newton comes to mind as one with some rather unusual religious views. I kind of get this - kids probably don’t understand all the theological nuance, and since the point of the books was in part to insist that one could be both a Christian and believe in science, I can understand the decision. 

 

The other, though, is indefensible. 

 

Humans are complex and flawed. All of us. Leaving the flaws out of a biography is deeply problematic for various reasons. Making god-like heroes of the great people of the past tends to lead to disillusionment when the feet of clay are discovered. 

 

But more than that, the flaws are often the most important thing to know about a person, because those flaws often remain hugely influential long after the person passes. 

 

Louis Agassiz perhaps illustrates this more than any other person. 

 

***

 

First, the good. Agassiz was a hugely important scientist, and is responsible for a lot of what we now know about geological time. His first work alone, on fossil fishes, greatly expanded our knowledge of evolutionary history, and would have established his legacy.

 

It is his second project that made his fame, however. As a Swiss citizen, he grew up around glaciers and mountains. While he did not come up with the idea of an ice age - that was two Frenchmen of his era - he was the one who carefully examined and documented evidence of glaciation around the world, and put together the evidence of past ice ages. 

 

He spent his later life teaching, and the list of students is a “who’s who” of scientists and conservationists of the next generation. (And also William James.) 

 

So, that’s the good. If we just look at his accomplishments, then he is deserving of a peak in his honor, in California’s most glaciated region. 

 

Unfortunately, he also has a profoundly negative aspect of his legacy, one which is completely ignored in the Sower biography. 

 

Agassiz was a proponent of “scientific racism” - the belief that humans are essentially different species separated by skin color. This was very popular in the 19th Century, and remains unfortunately popular today in right wing circles. (I won’t link it, but you still see people citing the thoroughly discredited 1994 book, The Bell Curve, which literally argues that black people are genetically inferior and intelligent, and thus attempting to better their lives and eliminate systemic racism is futile.) 

 

Since Agassiz was a Christian, and believed that humans were specially created (unlike Darwin, who argued that we evolved, and that all humans were the same species regardless of pigment), he decided that the different races were actually created separately. God made black people, white people, “red” people (indigenous Americans), and “yellow” people (south and east Asians) as separate species. And no bonus points for guessing which ones he considered the most intelligent and advanced. 

 

After Agassiz, some of his students embraced evolution, and decided that the real difference between the races was the level of evolution. Black people were still closely related to apes, and white people were the most highly evolved. That’s the “scientific racism” argument in a nutshell. 

 

Both Agassiz’ original idea of separate species and the later evolutionary theory were used to justify all kinds of injustice, from slavery to Jim Crow. And now, as an argument why government should favor the white “haves” and let the black and brown “have nots” starve. 

 

The rebuttal to this disproven idea is beyond the scope of this post, but I encourage reading Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You by Agustin Fuentes for an excellent rebuttal. 

 

***

 

You can see the problem though. Agassiz was both a giant in the history of science AND responsible for an evil doctrine that has caused untold suffering not merely in the United States but around the world. 

 

That’s a problematic legacy, but also emblematic of the complexity of humanity. All of our heroes have flaws. 

 

Kim Stanley Robinson argues that Agassiz should be replaced, but that Muir (who has his own issues) should stay. I agree on the second - no one figure is more important to the Sierra Nevada and its preservation as wilderness as Muir - but have mixed feelings on the second. 

 

While I thoroughly loathe “scientific racism” as an idea and justification for injustice, I also feel that Agassiz is too important to be “canceled” in that way. Particularly given his importance in the field of glaciation and geological history. 

 

Breckinridge, on the other hand….dude probably never even visited California and is famous only because he turned traitor in the service of expanding enslavement around the world. Cancel and replace him already. 

 Our route from South Lake to the pass.