Clarence James Glacken (1909-1989) was a Sacramentan whose 1967 magnum opus, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, was one of the most widely influential contributions to environmental scholarship in the 20th century. Despite professional success as an academic geographer, after suffering a series of mental and physical health crises, he destroyed his highly anticipated sequel to Traces. He died in Sacramento soon after, convinced his life’s work had been futile. Glacken was a third-generation Sacramentan, a fairly unusual trait for someone born in 1909, given that in his grandmothers’ generation the sta

How? By contributing to local history!  While researching my recent article on the Capitol Area Plan and the Ron Mandella Community Garden, I noticed how widely the facts varied from source to source, and how many facts were just plain missing. And even though this is a story that is relatively recent in living memory, the most frequent answer given in every interview I conducted was: “I don’t remember.”  If you have any information about any version of the Capitol Area Plan, the relationship between the Capitol Area Plan and the West End redevelopment project, the history of the Ron Mandella Community Garden (also known as the Terra Firma Garden and the adjacent garden known until the m

(Read Part 1 here, or click on the green Storyline tab) When CADA issued a Request for Proposals to private developers in 2000, the subsequent fight between RMCG advocates and CADA ended in 2004 with the RMCG’s destruction and two new gardens, one built as part of Fremont Mews and one built near Southside Park. A full account of the final protracted battle—especially regarding the lawsuits, the soil remediation issue, and the garden advocates’ organizing strategies—is still lacking, but the contested details of those years are not covered here. Instead, two of CADA’s tactics during this period are reconsidered in light of the evidence presented thus far: one, their presentation of the blo

Fifty years ago last month, the California State Legislature adopted the first version of the Capitol Area Plan (CAP). Revised in 1977 and again in 1997, this document’s incarnations have ordered the acquisition and arrangement of the state’s central city properties in the Capitol Area, a state-defined zone encompassing a sizeable swath of downtown. The story of Sacramento’s downtown development is convoluted, but the CAP is a key thread throughout that story. To mark its golden anniversary, this retrospective focuses on how the plan affected a specific block: the one enclosed by 14th, 15th, P and Q streets. Once the site of the Ron Mandella and Southside Community Gardens, identified as

I always buy vintage twirling footage when I can find it, which is not often. So when I found "Disqualified and Overqualified," I figured a documentary about a champion twirler with a bonus instructional disc was worth fifty bucks. Ten minutes into the movie, I realized it was a bargain -- plenty of home movies of the most technically advanced twirling I'd ever seen, interspersed with the charismatic subject bedecked in a gold headdress and energetically dishing on competitive twirling, circus twirling, and her extraordinary life. Twenty minutes into the movie, I was startled into spilling my beer on my dog when it was revealed that Annetta Lucero practiced for the World Championships on t