LOWER LAKE, Calif. – The Lake Community Pride Foundation will present a concert by the duo “Not Two” on Saturday, April 13.
The concert will take place from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Lower Lake High School Little Theater, located at 9430 Lake St. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
All proceeds go to support youth performing arts in Lake County.
Tickets cost $10 at the door. For tickets and information visit www.aneveningwith.org or call 707-701-3838.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Two Lake County children were honored at a ceremony at Taco Bell in Lakeport on Tuesday.
The children entered an art contest sponsored by the Lake County Children’s Council in honor of Child Abuse Awareness Month.
Children enrolled in the Lake County Office of Education ASES After School program participated in the contest to design artwork which will be featured on placemats at the Lakeport Taco Bell.
During the month of April, all trays at Taco Bell will use the colorful placemats in order to draw attention to Child Abuse Awareness Month.
The first place winner is Cheyanne Medina, a second grader from Upper Lake Elementary School. Second place winner is Jaqueline Castro, a third grader from Kelseyville Elementary School.
The drawings may be seen at Taco Bell in Lakeport for the month of April.
Artwork from all children who entered the the contest will be displayed at the “Lake County Cares for our Kids” Children’s Festival being held on Saturday, April 13, at Library Park in Lakeport.
This free festival will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will feature activities and entertainment for families.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Historian and author Mark Rawitsch will present a reading of his recently released book, “The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream,” on Sunday, April 7.
The reading will begin at 2 p.m. in Room 7050 of the new Lake Center, 2565 Parallel Drive, Lakeport.
It is open to the public with free admission.
In 1915, Jukichi and Ken Harada purchased a house on Lemon Street in Riverside, Calif. Close to their restaurant, church, and children's school, the house should have been a safe and healthy family home.
Before the purchase, white neighbors objected because of the Haradas' Japanese ancestry, and the California Alien Land Law denied them real-estate ownership because they were not citizens.
To bypass the law, Mr. Harada bought the house in the names of his three youngest children, who were American-born citizens. Neighbors protested again, and the first Japanese American court test of the California Alien Land Law of 1913 – The People of California v. Jukichi Harada – was the result.
Bringing this little-known story to light, “The House on Lemon Street” details the Haradas' decision to fight for the American dream.
Chronicling their experiences from their immigration to the United States through their legal battle over their home, their incarceration during World War II, and their lives after the war, this book tells the story of the family's participation in the struggle for human and civil rights, social justice, property and legal rights, and fair treatment of immigrants in the United States.
Sandra Dallas of The Denver Post has called the book “[A] highly engaging history of the California Japanese.”
Susan Hasegawa of San Diego City College has said of the author, “Rawitsch teaches that history, the creation of history, and preserving our history occurs in our backyard, not in some far-off place.”
Rawitsch is currently the dean of instruction at the Willits Center and the Lake Center for Mendocino College, and “The House on Lemon Street” is his first book.
It recently received the inaugural Crader Family Book Prize in American Values awarded to a first book which best exemplifies individual liberty, constitutional principles and civic virtue. Rawitsch was awarded a $1,000 honorarium for his winning entry.
The reading is sponsored by the Lake County Friends of Mendocino College and the Friends of the Mendocino College Library, affiliate groups of the Mendocino College Foundation.
For more information, call 707-263-4944 or visit www.mendocino.edu .
Robert Morgan, who lives in Ithaca, New York, has long been one of my favorite American poets. He’s also a fine novelist and, recently, the biographer of Daniel Boone. His poems are often about customs and folklore, and this one is a good example.
Living Tree
It’s said they planted trees by graves
to soak up spirits of the dead
through roots into the growing wood.
The favorite in the burial yards
I knew was common juniper.
One could do worse than pass into
such a species. I like to think
that when I’m gone the chemicals
and yes the spirit that was me
might be searched out by subtle roots
and raised with sap through capillaries
into an upright, fragrant trunk,
and aromatic twigs and bark,
through needles bright as hoarfrost to
the sunlight for a century
or more, in wood repelling rot
and standing tall with monuments
and statues there on the far hill,
erect as truth, a testimony,
in ground that’s dignified by loss,
around a melancholy tree
that’s pointing toward infinity.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2012 by Robert Morgan, whose most recent book of poems is Terroir, Penguin Poets, 2011. Poem reprinted from The Georgia Review, Spring 2012, by permission of Robert Morgan and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
NORTH COAST, Calif. – Historian and author Mark Rawitsch, dean of Instruction at Mendocino College, has been selected as the inaugural winner of the Crader Family Book Prize in American Values.
Rawitsch received the honor for his book, “The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream,” published by the University Press of Colorado.
“This work clearly embodies the spirit of the Crader Family Book Prize,” said Dr. Mark E. Miller, a member of the judging panel and chair of the History Department at Southern Utah University.
The Crader Family Book Prize recognizes a first book, which best exemplifies the values of the Crader Family Endowment for American Values: individual liberty, constitutional principles and civic virtue. Rawitsch was awarded a $1,000 honorarium for his winning entry.
“It’s an honor for my work to be recognized,” said Rawitsch. “I’m pleased that my story of California’s Harada House National Historic Landmark has been acknowledged as central to understanding that American stories of liberty, constitutional principles and civic virtue come in all colors,” he added.
Rawitsch worked with the Harada family for many years to tell the story of their landmark house in Riverside.
Publication of his book was supported by Dr. Lane Hirabayashi, professor of Japanese American incarceration, redress, and community in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The book also was chosen as the first volume in the new Nikkei in the Americas Series which features the best scholarship illustrating contemporary Japanese American culture and community.
Nineteen entries to the book award competition were received. Honorable mention went to Eduardo Elena’s “Dignifying Argentina,” Pittsburgh Press, and Harvey Bartle III’s “Mortals with Tremendous Responsibilities,” St. Joseph’s Press. Elena is an assistant professor of history at the University of Miami. Bartle III is a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Finalists in the competition were Donald Drakeman, “Church, State and Original Intent,” Cambridge; Tyler Johnson, “Devotion to the Adopted Country,” Missouri; MaryJean Wall, “How Kentucky Became Southern,” Kentucky; Mark Howland Rawitsch, “The House on Lemon Street,” Colorado; Harvey Bartle III, “Mortals with Tremendous Responsibilities,” St. Joseph’s; Priscilla Dowden-White, “Groping Toward Democracy,” Missouri; Eduardo Elena, “Dignifying Argentina,” Pittsburgh.
Submissions were open to any area of United States, European or Latin American history, but were required to examine the historical development of the political, religious and economic heritage of Western Civilization, or events directly related to them.
The competition was open to books that were peer-reviewed; published by an academic, university or commercial press in 2010, 2011, or 2012; written by a sole author; and a single work, rather than an edited collection or anthology. Works that were self-published, in languages other than English, or only existed as e-books were not considered.
“The author’s passion is evident,” Miller said of Rawitsch’s winning book. “He tells the story of the Harada family and their decades-long struggle to obtain civil rights, citizenship and ultimately liberty in the face of anti-Japanese discrimination from the early 20th century until World War II and after. He writes in an engaging style that captures and maintains the reader’s attention throughout the work.
“‘The House on Lemon Street’ is grounded in appropriate primary and secondary sources. In particular, the author makes excellent use of oral histories and personal insights throughout the book,” Miller said. “Through the specific details of the Harada family history, readers witness the struggles of Japanese Americans writ large for civil rights, property rights, and basic human rights under the U.S. Constitution. The book covers important decades for the Japanese people, including immigration at the turn of the century, building community in Riverside, California, battling alien land laws, and finally internment at Topaz, Utah.”
He added, “Rawitsch’s rich study is a fine example of scholarship on the minority experience in America and the larger battle for civil rights in the 20th century. Of the submissions for this year, ‘The House on Lemon Street’ best reflects the values of the Crader Family Book Prize: constitutional principles, civic virtues, and civil liberties.”
The Crader Family Endowment for American Values exists within the Southeast Missouri University Foundation, is managed by the chair of the Department of History and is dedicated to education, research and public engagement in the historical traditions of the United States of America and Western Civilization. The endowment’s objectives are to increase knowledge and appreciation of the political, religious and economic heritage of this nation and the West, and the values of individual liberty, constitutional principles and civic virtue that are at the foundation of this society.
Rawitsch will present a reading from “The House on Lemon Street” at the new Mendocino College Lake Center in Lakeport on April 7, and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles on Aug. 3.
For more information on the Crader Family Book Prize in American Values, contact Bowen at
UPPER LAKE, Calif. – Lake County Wine Studio is hosting a book signing party with local author Sunny Franson from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 30.
Franson’s just released book, “The Secret Lives of Chickens, or Tales from the Chickenyard and Beyond,” is a wonderful observation of the lives of a rooster named Sarge and his flock of hens.
“They have their own culture that is more complex than we assume,” said Franson. “They are stalwart little feathered beings that live with equanimity in the world around them, following the time-honored rules of the flock, day in and day out, in a generally pleasant and peaceful frame of mind.
“‘The Secret Lives of Chickens’ pulls us into a time and place that seem simpler but actually are not, because of the feathered inhabitants within,” Franson added. “These are tales that happened over many years’ time, but with chickens, it seems there is always more to learn.”
Franson was raised in Northern California, has degrees in anthropology and wildlife biology, completed graduate work in ethnomusicology and is an artist ( www.rootlets.com ).
Franson will be at the studio on Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. to greet visitors and to sign sold copies of her book.
Refreshments will be provided and wine will be available for sale by the taste or by the glass.
Wine tasting will feature varietals currently on sale as well as a sampling of other fine Lake County wines.
Lake County Wine Studio is a gallery for display of arts and a tasting room, wine bar and retail shop for the fine wines of Lake County.
The gallery is located at 9505 Main St. in Upper Lake. It is open Monday 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Friday from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.
For more information call Lake County Wine Studio at 707-275-8030 or 707-293-8752.
Award winning journalism on the shores of Clear Lake.
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