Part 1:
•Bienvenidos a Newport Beach by Firoozeh Dumas
In this essay Dumas talks about how is like living in Newport Beach. He said that when he told the kids at school that he was going to be moving to Newport Beach they told him that he must be rich. He described his life in Whittier. From their living room window, they could see the big Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket that was always lit up at night. Along with the Taco Bell and Wienerschnitzel signs. They have moved eight times. He said that for six blissful years he had lived in Abadan, Iran and that that was the last time he lived in one place for that long. Dumas was sick of moving and always being the new kid but he didn’t really like his home at Whittier. The neighbors had two dogs that always pooped on their front lawn. Their other neighbors had a couple of junk cars on their front lawn that were really ugly. Their new community at Newport Beach was maintained by an “Association”. He talked about all you could do and couldn’t do at Newport Beach. He said there were no junkers in Newport Beach, only Cadillacs and other expensive-looking cars. They felt like they had landed in heaven. And every day when his dad came home, he would say he felt like he was on vacation. He mentioned that Iranians don’t have pool parties, they have indoor parties. He said that all the streets there had Spanish named but there weren’t any Spanish speaking people. His parents still live in the same house they bought when he was in seventh grade.
My favorite sentence was, “My father said this is what happens when a person has never been hungry. I had never been hungry but I had never wanted to throw patio furniture into the pool” (92). I think people just behave the way they want to behave and it also depends on the education they have acquired and the morality they have been taught.
The story made me think of some really expensive communities, where only rich people can live in and all the houses look almost the same from the outside. And you don’t even see the cars because they are really expensive cars and they have them in the garage because they don’t want to live them in the street.
What I didn’t know that I know now is that there were such things as an “Association” where they decide when to do some changes. And how they will be doing those changes.
•Cotton Candy Mirrors by Devorah Major
In this essay Major talks about adolescent summer days when they would cross town to spend the day in their summer school of wonder at Playland at the Beach. She said that education was cheaper back in the day. There was the inevitable Ferris wheel that took you up higher than the windmills without sails, so that you could see the blue of the Pacific Ocean, the green of Golden Gate Park, and the pale stucco houses of Richmond district, all laid out all around you. The best ride was definitely bumper cars. But they would really like the Fun House. They would begin their journey with the trek through the hall of mirrors. They crashed, looked, laughed, and turned a corner, bounced again corner-to-corner, until at last they emerged. She described the distorting mirrors and how in these mirrors they became monsters, they became clowns, they lengthened, flattened, rounded. Their eyes grew as they made faces, pushed out their lips and pulled on their ears, distorting the image more completely, turning themselves into alien beings, into insects, into comedians. She would try to correct the image in the mirror so that somehow it would be closer to the truth. She said that it was after all, herself that she saw, or at least a form of herself, in those mirrors. And those quiet times in the mirrors showed a lot. She said that in fact, she doesn’t even look at regular mirrors too often these days, knowing that the right lightning can hide any number of sins, or reveal every detail of abuse. Major learned many things that summer and she said that that was the official educational institutions of their childhood.
My favorite sentence was, “I’ve learned to use the eyes of others as my mirrors. But only those people whose eyes are clear and shine with laughter and love” (102). I really like this sentence because that is something I’ve learned too. It makes me happy when I do this.
This story makes me think of when I was younger and used to go to the Santa Rosa Fair Grounds. There I would go into the house of mirrors and it was really cool, or so I thought. Because the mirrors did make you look like alien sometimes and many other things. Mirrors are very interesting if you think about it.
What I didn’t know before that I know now is all about the silver disk that looked like a flying saucer. I have never gone in that ride before but I heard about it and some people say they like it. I don’t know if I want to spin round and round for a while.
•Berkeley by Michael Chabon
In this essay Chabon talks about the greatness of Berkeley. He said that where passion is married to intelligence, you may find geniuses, neurosis, madness or rapture. None of these is really an unfamiliar presence in the tree-lined streets of Berkeley, California. Also that among the many sad and homeless people who haunt Berkeley one finds an unusually high number of poets, sages, secret Napoleons and old-fashioned prophets of doom. He said that that town drove him crazy. That nowhere else in America are so many people obliged to suffer more inconvenience for the common good. Berkeley’s streets, though a rational nineteenth-century grid underlies them, are a speed-busting tangle of artificial dead ends, obligatory left turns and deliberately tortuous obstacle-course barriers known as chicanes, put up in place to protect children who are never sent to play outside. But he said that so much for boosterism, and yet he declared, unreservedly and with all his heart, that he loved Berkeley, California. He can’t imagine living somewhere else. And all the things that drive him crazy are the very things that make that town worth knowing, worth putting up with, worth loving and working to preserve. Berkeley is richer than any place he has ever lived.
My favorite sentence is, “in a city that lives and dies on the passion and intelligence, the madness and rapture, of its citizens” (112). Maybe the citizens are after all what make a place so great or so not so great.
What this story made me think, of was the University of Berkeley. I have never been there but I can imagine it when he talks about the intelligent people and the poets and the Napoleons. This would definitely be an interesting place to live in.
What I didn’t know that I now know is that the town, though laid out in the 1880s, boomed in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire, when it was settled by refugees from San Francisco, fleeing hitcher under the mistaken impression that the jutting rock rids of Berkeley’s hills would be proof against temblors.
•California Honky-tonk by Kathi Kamen Goldmark
In this essay Goldmark talks about how they got into singing. The thing was, they weren’t exactly a band. The first place they performed at was a California honky-tonk. At that time they started practicing a bunch of songs. One of them was “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw?” by Jimmy Buffett. They didn’t even had a name for the so called band and one day they passed a motel called El Rancho Motel and they decided that was going to be their name. The night they first performed Goldmark singed the song by Jimmy Buffett and a four hundred pound biker called Lobo carried her and started walking toward the door. But she’s been in many bands since Sinbad’s Saloon. She has been in the Soundtrack in San Francisco, the Sundowner in Benicia, the Hopland Brewery, and DeMarco’s 23 Club in Brisbane. She became friends with owner Lil DeMarco who died later on and the club went through some renovations.
My favorite sentence is, “But bruises heal, and sometimes even turn into good stories” (120). I think these can be very true. Sometimes you get bruises but you had fun and the bruises heal while the good stories remain in your memory forever.
This story made me think of a movie I watched of how a band started playing, but the main character wasn’t as fortunate as Goldmark. They didn’t get too far because of drugs and alcohol.
What I didn’t know that I know now is that there is or was a Hotel called El Rancho Hotel in California. And it was a random name for this band.
The similarities of the four stories are of course that it takes place in California. But I think that these four stories have many differences this time. The only similarity I see is between Newport Beach and Berkeley where they both describe the place and the neighbors…But the other stories are more about something they learn or about good stories. But they are all good stories that take place in California.
Part 2:
2) Megan - She learned from Steinbeck’s essay that many people thought of California in a mythical sense, because of its notion as Paradise, and also wealth in resources.
3) Alexa)- Her favorite sentence from Ode to CalTrans was, "The Hollywood Freeway becomes the newer highway I remember from my youth , curves sculpted around hillside neighborhoods of bungalows and apartments on stilts , a roadway starting to show signs of its age but not yet bursting at the seams."
4) Mario- He didn't know in 1510 the revolution of novels took off.
5) Raquel- She had no idea that the name California could be traced as far away as Spain.
6) Stephen- He did not know that Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay is also known as "Maverick's."
7) Michael- his favorite sentence was, "My mother and father were car-less for the first year or so after their arrival from Guatemala.”
8) Danielle- She knows pretty much everything this story told me because I took history in younger grades.
9) Alex- The reading made him think of all of the untouched landscapes in California.
10) Judy- She learned that surfers look for storms and when big waves arrive to go out and surf.
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