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Quite the World, Isn't It?

Waves big and small

September 24, 2010
Unusual circumstances -- krill close to shore -- have brought magnificent blue whales for a protracted stay in the channel between Los Angeles and, well, the Channel Islands. So last Sunday Margaret and I on a whim took a whale-watching boat from Newport Beach to Two Harbors on Catalina Island, and back.

The marine layer was thick on the way out, and we only saw a pod or two of dolphins -- which is pretty cool, but we were looking for blues. The water was a little rough -- at least three people got sick that we saw -- and I couldn't shake from the back of my mind Susan Casey's book The Wave, which I reviewed for the LA Times.

But we made it to Two Harbors without incident, had lunch and a nice little walk around (saw a couple of buffalo), then boarded the boat under brilliant blue skies for the return trip.

And saw the whales. Magnificent. This is the best of the photos I was able to take. And this links to a Flickr stream of some of the others.
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This is what The Fear Within will look like

September 21, 2010
Tags: writing, history, nonfiction
This is always a fun moment in the life of a writer: Getting to see the cover of the next book. The design folks at Rutgers University Press did a very nice job with a difficult art element, an array of mugshots. I think it works very neatly. Still awaiting word on official pub date but it's looking like sometime in March.

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Wondering if this is a measure of success

September 21, 2010
Tags: writing, Teaching
I have to admit, I laughed when this popped up the other day. And I assume it means my first book has cleared some sort of hurdle -- an online site that sells essays to college students has done one on Blood Passion.

Of course, these pre-packaged essays are crap, and I hope any professor who receives one fails the offending student (I've already failed two students and severely reprimanded a third for plagiarism issues, and I'm only on my fifth class).

But as a barometer, I guess this means enough labor and history profs have assigned the book (thank you very much) that these vultures think they can make a profit by selling essays about it. Read More 
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Working away on the Detroit project

August 18, 2010
Tags: writing
Well, it's been a busy summer. Left home in late June and won't get back until next week through a combination of research for the Detroit book and some family time back East.

The Detroit book is progressing well, though it's a real challenge to distill such a broad amount of often disjointed history into a compelling narrative. But it's a good challenge to have, believe me. I hope I can do the topic justice.

Meantime, we're just finishing up the copy edits for The Fear Within: Spies, Commies and American Democracy on Trial, which should be out next Spring. I still get a kick out of typing my name into the Library of Congress catalog search engine and having it pop up two books. Great thrill for a writer and history buff to be included in the collection Thomas Jefferson started.

I'm hoping the designers at Rutgers University Press, who did such a wonderful job on the cover for Blood Passion, will have something for me to look at in the next month or two, Once we've settled on the cover, I'll post it here... Read More 
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On Peter Case, Jon Clinch, and garlic

July 14, 2010
Tags: books, music, travel
This is kind of a journalistic trifecta. In the past couple of weeks I've had a few freelance articles pop up, one on singer/songwriter Peter Case, another on author Jon Clnch and the third on the city of Gilroy, California, the self-anointed Garlic Capital of the World.

The Case profile was a lot of fun. I took along my son Michael, a guitar player, in part to hear what Case had to say about his music, and in part to use the car-pool lane for the long drive from Irvine to Santa Monica. It's all about the traffic out here. And the occasion for the Case profile was the release of his new album, "Wig!" Some of his strongest work in years. There's a video embedded below from his show at McCabe's Guitar Shop the other day in Santa Monica -- same place where I interviewed him.

I also loved Clinch's new novel, his second. Kings of the Earth: A Novel is a fictionalized look at a bizarre death and murder case in Central New York. He nails the terrain, and it serves as a great follow up to his debut, Finn, picking up the story of Huck Finn's father where Mark Twain left off.

As for the Gilroy travel piece, well, how can you not like a place that smells like an Italisn restaurant?

"Somebody Told the Truth" (Live) by Peter Case from Tom Weber on Vimeo.

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This is, like, you know, cool, or something?

July 8, 2010
Tags: writing

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

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What happens when the government acts illegally?

June 16, 2010
Tags: history, law, Human Rights, civil right
I blog regularly for an organization called Protect Consumer Justice, looking at issues affecting people's access to courts to try to redress grievances. My post this morning is about a troubling Supreme Court decision, upholding by inaction lower court decisions, that give the government free rein to do what it wants so long as it claims "state secrets."

I won't repeat the post here, but please do wander over there to give it a read. After you watch this takedown by Jon Stewart of the Obama administration's failure to follow through on some of the key issues on which he was elected.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Respect My Authoritah
www.thedailyshow.com
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Ancient times on the Channel Islands

June 13, 2010
Tags: travel, Journalism, profiles
I spent a day back in December out on Santa Cruz Island with Jennifer Perry, an anthropology professor at Pomona College, for a profile piece for Pomona Magazine. It was a lot of fun -- she's very bright, and very engaged with the history of the Chumash tribe, whom her research (and that of others) suggests served a role as something of a banker for pre-Columbian trade along the Central California coast.

Santa Cruz is the largest of the Channel Islands at 98 square miles, and has been a lot of things over the years, including a ranch. Now owned by the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, a visit here is a wonderful experience in roughing it. Camping is limited and rudimentary, there are no services, and if you miss the ferry you're stuck until the next day.

What I enjoyed most, though, was listening to Perry talk about the clues in the landscape as she walked along the blufftop, and then inland a bit. What was a pile of loose rock to my eye were, to Perry, the leftovers from of ancient mining, and she poked into the rock piles to pull out the evidence -- chipped stones and discarded tools for splintering the old chert, a kind of flint, into usable sharp edges.

Give the piece a read, and let me know what you think...

Photo of Jennifer Perry by Steve Osman/Pro Photography Network. Read More 
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On baseball, and lowered expectations

June 4, 2010
Tags: baseball, galarraga, joyce, Detroit Tigers, perfect game
Well, it's taken baseball, and a blown call, and a perplexing public reaction to shake me out of my non-posting doldrums (actually, been awfully busy, including a few fun days in Las Vegas).

You've all seen the chatter about Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga's bid for a perfect game -- no base runners allowed through nine innings -- dying when the first base umpire, Jim Joyce, mistakenly called the 27th batter safe in a not-so-close play.

It's baseball. It happens, and it's that unpredictability that makes the game so much fun to watch. And Joyce, once he saw the replay, admitted he blew the call, found Galarraga and apologized, which Galarraga accepted. Two pros doing the adult thing.

What's jarring, though, is the response from all corners -- regular folks to the talking heads on the sports channels -- that it was refreshing that both men acted in such a professional manner. How low are our standards, and expectations, that it becomes such a big deal when two people don't act like jerks? Read More 
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Blood Passion goes north to Santa Cruz

May 5, 2010
Tags: history, Culture
I'm headed up to Santa Cruz later today to take part in the "Labor & Immigration: Past & Present" conference at UC Santa Cruz. It's a free conference, and I'll be on a panel at 9 a.m. Saturday with Zeese Papanikolas, who also has written about the Ludlow Massacre.

The panel involves watching a documentary-in-progress on the massacre by Alex Johnson, who has talked with both Zeese and me in his research. Then Zeese and I will put the documentary against the backdrop of our own knowledge of the events. Then we open it up to questions, I believe, which should make for an interesting conversation.

If you're in the area, stop on by .... Read More 
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